Postecoglou praises in-form Rojas

Melbourne Victory coach Ange Postecoglou has paid tribute to winger Marco Rojas after his superb display in their 1-0 win over Perth Glory.

After a switch to a wide left position midway through the first half, Rojas tormented the Glory defence throughout and scored the winner with a sublime strike in the 57th minute on Friday.

Speaking after the match at AAMI Park, Postecoglou said he had been pleased with the effort of the 21-year-old.

“He was good again tonight. I thought we could have got him into the play a little bit more in the first half,” Postecoglou said.

“Our system is designed to give somebody like Marco, and Andrew Nabbout and Archie (Thompson) and the wide players we’ve got, the freedom to play. But to get that license to play, you’ve got to do all the other things.

“He was good, he scored a cracking goal and he’s been good all year.

“The good thing about Marco is he’ll roll up to training and come in wanting to get better and that’s what we need.”

Postecoglou was also pleased with the performance of 19-year-old Nabbout, who inked a new deal with the club on Friday that will see him remain with Victory until the end of the 2014/15 A-League season.

“Young Andrew did well. He’s not ready to play 90 minutes, but we got 60 minutes out of him today, he looked threatening and got into some good areas.

“He’ll get better, he’s nowhere near where we want him to be at the moment, but he’s learning on the job.”

Despite being pleased to come away with the win – moving Victory to within three points of A-League leaders Adelaide United – Postecoglou was unhappy with the lack of application shown by his team early in the match.

“We were pretty disappointed with our first half, we just didn’t play at the tempo we wanted to,” he said.

“We were threatening but not often enough, it ended up being a little bit of a stop-start game which is not what we want, particularly here at home.

“We played probably half an hour of good football from the beginning of the second half and really played with the tempo and the manner that we want to play, and we got the reward for it.

“It was OK, but we need to be better.”