Melbourne Victory jumped to the top of the A-League ladder with a 4-1 win over Sydney FC and will clinch the premiers plate if Melbourne City slip up against Wellington Phoenix on Monday.
Victory are priced at 7/4 to win the minor premiership and will now have to sit and wait after getting their own job done on Saturday.
Top two secured
At the very least Victory should be looking at second place. The win over Sydney means that third place Western United would have to beat Adelaide by six goals to jump above them.
That looks highly unlikely so Tony Popovic’s men look to have earned a week off before finals no matter what.
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"Coming in the top two gives you the week without a game. So that's the first part," Popovic said after the game. "The second part is we can still finish first so we can still win that premiers plate, so there's still a trophy there that's ours at the moment.
"Unless that changes Monday, the trophy is ours. So we've put ourselves in a position to do that. Then we get now time to prepare, unless Western United can win by six. You'd like to think away from home that's difficult."
Popovic proud
It has been a strong end to the season for Victory and they will go in to finals on a high no matter what happens on Monday.
"We want to win of course and we showed that we deserve to win,” Popovic added. "The boys are certainly delivering and they have throughout the whole season for me and in these last three months they've been phenomenal."
