The circumstances could hardly be stranger but Tony Popovic says the resumption of Melbourne Victory's troubled derby with Melbourne City comes down to a simple equation.
"We're down 1-0 and we look at it that we have 70-odd minutes to win a game of football," the Victory coach said.
The A-League Men match will restart on Wednesday night, 110 days after it began on December 17, with the clock on 21 minutes and City leading 1-0 courtesy of Aiden O'Neill's 11th-minute goal.
It will resume at the spot on AAMI Park where it was so dramatically brought to a halt - via a drop ball to City goalkeeper Tom Glover, the player hit over the head with a metal bucket during a violent pitch invasion.
The circumstances are some of the strangest Popovic has dealt with and he admits he was surprised the game isn't being completely replayed.
"We can't hide from the fact that we don't start the game at zero minutes and we're down 1-0," he said.
"But we've been aware of this situation for quite some time now.
"We've all moved on from what happened and the circumstances.
"The only thing that remains the same is that from that match, we start at the point that the game stopped - everything else is different."
The pitch invasion cast a dark shadow over Victory's season, with $550,000 in fines and crowd restrictions among the Football Australia sanctions imposed on the club.
Remarkably, Victory now sit just four points outside the top six and are out to continue a once-unlikely charge towards finals against stuttering leaders City.
"We're in better condition now. At that point the team was very different," Popovic said.
"We had a lot of injuries and players that weren't in physical shape to really play at the level that we expect. Now we feel that the team is strong, the players that have come in have made a difference.
"So the team has changed a lot. We feel the last six-odd weeks that we've been able to be more consistent.
"Recently we've picked up two very important results. We believe that tomorrow we can carry on and improve our performance again.
"If we do that, I believe we can win the game."
Popovic admits using substitutes in a 70-minute match will be a new situation while both teams can and will change their original line-ups.
City's star Socceroo Mathew Leckie (hamstring) is sidelined, while midfielder Taras Gomulka has moved to Brisbane Roar.
Victory's Nani (ACL tear) and Jake Brimmer (meniscus) are injured, while striker Nick D'Agostino moved to Norway.
Victory have signed Fernando Romero, Damien Da Silva, Connor Chapman and Bruce Kamau.
Romero is back from suspension while Victory are hopeful Jason Geria will return from soreness.
