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Central Coast Mariners host a rejuvenated Perth Glory on Friday night desperate to break their streak of wasted A-League opportunities.
Mariners coach Lawrie McKinna knows Perth will be difficult to break down, though, expecting David Mitchell’s men to give nothing away at Bluetongue Stadium after finally picking up their first win of the season against Wellington in the battle of the battlers last round.
“Perth is going to be difficult. They’ll come here looking for a draw. They’re not going to come at us and they’re going to sit and hope they can get some service into (Eugene) Dadi and try and catch us,” McKinna said.
“We’ve just got to be patient and we should do well.”
Two weeks in a row the Mariners have thrown away all three points to finish with draws, last week against 10-man Melbourne deep into stoppage time.
“I was upset after the (Melbourne) game and I had a bit of a go but in the next breath I told them how well they did,” McKinna said.
“They know what went wrong – they switched off.
“We’ve had three really good performances on the spin. Alright, we should have beaten Wellington and we drew, we should have beaten Melbourne but we didn’t – those last four seconds cost us.
“Some of the football we’re playing, the intensity we’re playing with is good. With a wee bit of luck we could be sitting up at the top of the league. We need to stay positive.”
Dadi was the key man against Wellington, the Ivory Coast-born striker not only scoring the decisive penalty but also calling on his upper body strength time and again to control the long balls peppered in, looking for players to run off him.
The 35-year-old trained fully on Wednesday, showing no ill-effects from an ankle knock picked up on the weekend but speedster Jimmy Downey will spend his third week on the sidelines as he makes a slower than expected recovery from a calf injury.
The Mariners have veteran defender Andrew Clark and striker Nik Mrdja available again, both shaking off the flu.
McKinna worked under Mitchell for a number of years as assistant in the old NSL and the Glory boss has another Mariners tie in that he was a former Socceroos teammate of star goalkeeper Mark Bosnich in the 1990s.
“David Mitchell was an ex-teammate of mine, I know he’ll have them primed and ready for optimum performance and of course they won last week,” said Bosnich, a former Manchester United and Aston Villa star.
Asked if he thought the Mariners would be able to shake off their disappointing results of late, Bosnich tied three cliches into one.
“The past is history and the future’s a mystery so we’re just living for the moment,” the in-form custodian said.
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