Melbourne City will have its sights set on a return to winning ways this Saturday evening when we face Sydney FC away from home.
Prior to departing for the fixture, Head Coach Aurelio Vidmar spoke with media and covered a range of topics…
LEARNINGS FROM LAST WEEK
“I thought last week we defended very, very well as a group and we need to continue that for sure.
“Coming off conceding nine goals in two games, that was always tough to take. So last week was a really good foundation and we just need to continue to do that, continue to do it better, and have everyone working hard to put themselves in good positions when we don’t have the ball.”
ON THINGS ‘CLICKING’ IN THE FINAL THIRD
“It’s clear when a team has the regular players playing all the time, there’s a lot more cohesion and it works better.
“But when it’s the complete opposite and unfortunately, we’ve had to face that on many occasions over the last five or six weeks chopping and changing players so really not getting a hell of a lot of cohesion.
“Tils played his first game in six months last week, Lecks also his first start for a number of months, also five months out for Andy. Of course, they’re a little bit rusty and it’s going to take a little bit of time to get some cohesion.”
ON GALLOWAY’S INJURY AND WHO STARTS AT LEFT BACK
“He’s (Scott Galloway) just tweaked his calf so he’s probably got a couple of weeks on the sideline. On top of that, he’s just now reported sick yesterday – so he’s probably going to be a couple of weeks away.
“He’s (Vicente Fernandez) he’s going to start. He’s come in on loan and yeah he might be a little bit underdone, we didn’t envisage him getting any minutes last week and (were planning to) slowly build him up over the next couple of weeks.
“He ended up jumping into a Derby, so that was a nice baptism of fire for him which he really enjoyed and I thought he did quite well. You can see he was still rusty in some aspects of his game, but again, that’s just going to be a number of weeks before he can get a little bit of rhythm. So yeah, he is good to go.
“How long he can last? That’s an unknown for sure, but we’ll see how it goes. Once he’s tiring, then we can make the substitution.”
THE NEW LOOK MIDFIELD THREE
“Again, the cohesion… that was (James) Jeggo’s third game and again, it’s just a matter of time to get cohesion.
“Lecks just slotted in there for us last week, and Steve’s (Ugarkovic) always given 100{b3640145f6c3c4290e487cd1c7977ca4a06579c8c179627a914cf0f8caccad0a}, so they’re the sort of things that you get through pre-season when you’ve got guys in there on a weekly basis and then the weekly basis becomes fortnightly, monthly and all of a sudden, they get some strong connections and that’s probably a little area that we’re lacking.
“But you know what? They all know what we’re trying to do, so that’s also a bonus… and Lecks being a physical player and also a smart player, he gives us that little bit of grunt also in midfield.
You can watch City take on Sydney FC at 5:30pm tomorrow live on Paramount+.
