Melbourne City have beaten the in-form Western United comfortably at home following a 2-0 victory on Tuesday evening.

Here are the three things we learned from the match up:

Politidis stepping up

Harry Politidis is someone who probably would’ve thought his game time would be rationed at the beginning of the season. Despite being around the squad for a couple of years now, the likes of Cohen, Leckie, Tilio and Nabbout would have made it hard for any player to break through, let alone someone who at the time was yet to really make an impression.

As fortune would have it for Harry, an injury-ravaged squad has seen him thrust into the starting 11, and boy is he stepping up. Over the last couple of weeks, Politidis has really found his feet in the squad and is looking like our most threatening player going forward.

Having put on some decent muscle over the off-season, it has added a new element of physicality and power that is quite reminiscent of Andrew Nabbout. Andy is a good comparison for how Politidis has been playing as of late. Fast, purposeful, strong, willing to run at defenders and an all round handful for the opposition.

Getting on the scoresheet again after opening his goal-scoring account with City last week, Politidis is most certainly one to keep an eye on moving forward!

What’s happening with our physio department? 

There has been much discussion around City’s injury situation at the moment, so much so that director of football Michael Petrillo addressed the issue at half-time of the match coverage.

During this, Petrillo expressed no concern around the medical department at City, and simply put our hospital ward worth of injuries down to bad luck. This aged like milk, as 17-year-old Lawrence Wong’s promising debut was cut short five minutes into the second half as he left the ground clutching what appeared to be a calf strain.

Now I’m no expert, but I don’t feel like teenagers should be having soft tissue injuries less than an hour into their debut, not in a professional environment at least. Not only is the growing injury list cause for concern, but also the consistent setbacks for Leckie and Tilio during their rehabilitation process have extended their initial one-month injuries to six to eight weeks, with the potential for an even longer recovery.

Despite Petrillo’s attempts to pour water on the situation, I’m not buying it. Having as many new injuries as we do alongside the mismanagement of existing ones, with our facilities, it simply isn’t good enough and needs to be addressed.

Remarkably solid

We’ve been pretty harsh on Vidmar here at Talking City at times, but it’s time to give some credit where credit is due.

Given all our hurdles this season, we have been remarkably solid. Vidmar has currently got a team of mostly kids in second spot, claiming points from 9 out of 11 games and five clean sheets.

Western United were four games on the bounce coming into this, having knocked off Auckland and Sydney away from home in the process. We’ve just beaten them 2-0 without much worry. That’s pretty incredible when you stop to think of it.

Plaudits should be given to the staff and players alike, but it’s the manager who takes the heat when we’re bad, so he deserves the credit when we’re good. Things could be a lot worse this season, but this team full of young blokes with a point to prove are joy to watch. There are goals being scored and discipline being maintained at the back.

There was a lot of doom and gloom heading into this year, but I don’t see why a few of us can’t start to dare to dream.

City now have another quick turnaround as we face Brisbane at home this Saturday.