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Melbourne Victory have overwhelmed Perth Glory 4-1 in a high-quality encounter to cement their grip on second spot on the A-League ladder.
Kevin Muscat's men had not beaten the Glory in their past eight A-League attempts but were thoroughly deserving winners at AAMI Park on Saturday night.
Victory are second on 45 points, 11 adrift of Sydney FC with four rounds to play, and Perth are fifth on 32 points.
The Victory had all the play in the opening minutes but found themselves a goal down in the fifth minute.
Diego Castro opened the scoring after goalkeeper Lawrence Thomas could only parry a strong header from Adam Taggart, the Spaniard rifling his angled shot into the net.
The Victory steadied and deserved to draw level on 23 minutes when Marco Rojas' free-kick found Besart Berisha, who glanced his header home for his 99th A-League goal.
Berisha then turned provider in the 42nd minute.
The striker juggled the ball brilliantly near the corner flag then delivered a dangerous ball into the box that Fahid Ben Khalfallah headed home from close range.
Glory had two big penalty shouts denied, with Andy Keogh and Castro brought down, and Rojas compounded the visitors' anger in the 48th minute with a superb individual goal.
The Kiwi international latched onto a ball on the counter and coolly curled his shot past the despairing dive of Liam Reddy.
The Glory stopper was left rooted to the spot in the 74th minute when James Troisi lashed home a stunning goal from outside the box to put an exclamation point on Victory's outstanding performance.
AAP
Topics: sport, soccer, a-league, melbourne-3000, vic, perth-6000, wa, australia