Aurelio Vidmar has opened up on the team’s response to injured stars Andrew Nabbout and Marco Tilio ahead of City’s trip to Perth.
It was a resilient performance from the team, with Vidmar buoyed by the performances of Nathaniel Atkinson and Kai Trewin.
Read the Head Coach’s pre-match thoughts ahead of City’s trip to Western Australia…
TEAM REACTS TO INJURED STARS
“It’s always difficult to take, but unfortunately that’s all part of professional sport. I would’ve loved for that not to have happened, but it has. We had a quick chat about it on Tuesday and the boys understand that it’s all part of the game and to be honest, guys just got on with it and training’s been very good this week.
“As difficult as it is to take, we’ve got to move forward, we can’t dwell on it – we’re here to support both of them, especially Andy because he’s going to be out for the remainder of the season, for the next 12 months, so as always, we’ll support those guys like we always do and get on with playing our football.”
SOCCEROOS STAR RETURNS
“That’s the plan [to get more minutes into the legs of Mathew Leckie this week]. I think he had 20 odd minutes last week so that was good, he’s pulled up pretty well, so again just slowly trying to build him up.
“Obviously they’re all important players, but someone with Mat’s experience, he can play a variety of roles, we really need him… he’s not going to be at the top of his game right now, but if he continues to get minutes on the weekend, and then we almost have a three week break until our next game, we can build him up again during that period.”
POPOVIC EYES THE A-LEAGUE
“I thought last week, both Nate and Kai were excellent and there job is just to perform on the highest level and if they can do that on a weekly basis… obviously we’ve seen his [Tony Popovic] not shy to pick A-League players, and if they’re in good form and he sees that they fit his structure they’re always a good chance.
“I thought Nate was pretty good, and Kai was excellent last week.”
FOCUSED ON OURSELVES
“Absolutely [expect Perth to come out hard]. It’s always a difficult game in Perth and they’ve had a difficult start. I thought they had a pretty good pre-season, they had some injuries in the last few weeks and they’re playing at home, they obviously always want to perform well in front of their home fans, so it’s always a tricky game this one.
“We just got to think about doing the things we’ve done throughout our pre-season and we showed that against Newcastle, we only showed that in half a game against Victory, and we showed it for 90 minutes plus against Western United – we know we have it in ourselves.”
FIXTURE DETAILS
A-League Men: Round 4
Perth Glory v Melbourne City FC
HBF Park, Perth
Sunday 10 November, 8:45pm KO
