Victory find the right gear to dismantle shambolic Mariners

It took a little while, but Melbourne Victory are back, and how.

Melbourne playmaker Keisuke Honda in action during Victory’s win over the Mariners at AAMI Park. Picture: Getty Images

It took a little while, but Melbourne Victory are back, and how.

The defending champions flexed their considerable muscles to hand Central Coast a 4-1 hiding at AAMI Park, making it back-to-back wins to climb into the top four for the first time this season.

Aided by some shambolic defending from the Mariners, Victory had the game all but sealed after going into break 3-0 up through goals from marquee man Keisuke Honda (30th minute), James Troisi (35th) and Corey Brown (45th).

The Mariners were much improved in the second half and pulled a goal back through substitute Mario Shabow but it wasn’t nearly enough and Josh Hope added an exclamation mark to the Victory win with a goal in the dying seconds.

After losing their opening two games of the season, Victory have now won their past two games, though Honda believes there is still plenty of room for improvement.

“We were very good in the first half, it was our best for the season so far, but we can do better,” the Japanese superstar said.

“We will work harder and we will get better.”

“The first half today was tremendous,” coach Kevin Muscat said. “It was exciting. It was disciplined. It was controlled. It was measured. It had a lot of desire about it.”

With Usain Bolt watching from the stands, the Mariners were terrible in the first half and simply couldn’t recover.

They are now rooted to the bottom of the table and have conceded seven goals in their past two games. This game was effectively over at halftime after Victory, with the help of some awful defending, had dismantled the Mariners.

It took the home side some time to get their bearings in front of goal after spurning a raft of chances, but once the first one went in via Honda on the half-hour there was no stopping them.

Honda must have thought it was his birthday when Antony Golec put a misdirected pass straight to him, leaving him with an almost uninterrupted run into the box before steering his left-foot shot into the bottom-right corner of the net.

Victory only had to wait another five minutes to double their lead, Terry Antonis feeding a lovely pass to Troisi who had ghosted into the box on the left and slotted the ball home.

The chances kept coming thick and fast but it wasn’t until first-half stoppage time that they added a third after an Antonis shot was blocked before falling into the path of Brown who had no problems putting away the chance.

The Mariners looked much better in the second half, and they needed to be. Connor Pain was heavily involved in the Mariners pulling a goal back on 62 minutes after making a good run into the box and cutting the ball back for Ross McCormack, whose shot struck the back leg of teammate Shabow and went in.

But they could not find another way through and it was left to Hope to round off the proceedings with his first A-League goal in the dying seconds of the match.

Mariners coach Mike Mulvey rued his side’s defensive mistakes.

“You can’t give a team like Victory opportunities to score because they’re good enough to score goals themselves,” he said.

“(Our) soft underbelly reared its ugly head once again.”