Carlos Hernandez

Carlos Hernandez will return to the Melbourne Victory line-up for Wednesday's AFC Champions League match against Chunnam Dragons in Korea.

The Costa Rican has missed the first four games of the campaign with a knee injury, but after getting through two training sessions ahead of the match in Gwangyang, will make his ACL debut on Wednesday from off the bench.

"Carlos has got through two tough training sessions this week," Merrick said.

"He's only about 70 per cent fit, but he'll play some part in the game because his injury is completely healed, so now it's more a case of getting him match fit."

"The more game time he can get, the better, so he'll definitely come off the bench at some stage."

Hernandez comes into the squad for the suspended Leigh Broxham, while the other likely changes could see Nathan Elasi and Tom Pondeljak make their starting debuts.

Merrick said he was keen to get more form his attacking players, despite the fact that the Victory have no hope of progressing past the group stage.

"We'll probably play Nathan Elasi from the start and Tom Pondeljak is up to about 75 per cent fit now, so he'll probably start as well," Merrick said.

"We've scored six goals so far in the AFC Champions League, three from Danny Allsopp and the other three from defenders with Kevin Muscat from the penalty spot and Rodrigo Vargas from set pieces."

"We're still trying to get our strikers and midfielders in goal scoring mode."

"Nathan has been training particularly well and is scoring lots of goals when we play 11-a-side matches amongst ourselves, so it’s a good opportunity for him to see if he can take the next step up."