A-League: Ernie Merrick challenges Phoenix to keep winning run alive

Ernie Merrick is refusing to get carried away with Wellington’s first set of back-to-back wins in over a year.

Wellington’s Roy Krishna, left, slides home the first goal for Phoenix against Central Coast Mariners in Canberra.

Wellington coach Ernie Merrick is refusing to get carried away with his side’s first set of back-to-back wins in more than a year, and challenged his team to make it three in a row next week.

A five-star performance from Roy Krishna inspired the Phoenix to a dominant 2-0 win over Central Coast on Saturday to seal successive victories for the first time since October 2015.

Merrick was full of praise for Krishna, who scored his fourth goal in three games, but was just as ecstatic with players deputising for five Phoenix regulars away on international duty. Now Merrick has urged his men to keep gathering momentum in the A-League, although they’ll have to do it against a Melbourne Victory side that fired six goals past them three weeks ago.

“I thought that was a very important game for us to win. I thought it was a terrific occasion, Remembrance Day, and coming over here to Canberra,” Merrick said. “But I feel as though we need to go on a run of more than two, so we’ve got to keep it in perspective. To have so many inexperienced players come into a team at once, I knew we’d prepared for it pre-season, but it’s still a lot of pressure away from home.”

Merrick admitted that without his troupe of All Whites, he had planned to maximise Krishna’s pace against the Mariners defence at GIO Stadium. “Roy was on fire up front and his pace is incredible,” Merrick said. “We knew that, so we set up for a counterattacking game. Our defence though, that was where the real inexperience was.”

Central Coast coach Paul Okon hinted at inserting livewire midfielder Trent Buhagiar into his run-on side following his side’s inept showing. A flat Mariners outfit struggled to get into the game, firing just two shots on target.

AAP