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Opinion
Richard Garcia has done an admirable job fighting fires on all fronts as the coach, however his time has come to an end with the Glory’s owner.
Tony Sage has cited a run of one point from four home games as the reason for the coaching change.
Garcia will leave the glory with a dreadful winning percentage of sub-30, but he has become a cult favourite of fans for his outbursts at press conferences in relation to east coast bias.
The glory coaching position was always going to be a poisoned chalice, due to the state’s COVID lockdown laws. Had those laws not been in place, how different the fortune of Perth may have been with Andrew Nabbout and Nathaniel Atkinson, who left without ever kicking a ball due to the lockdown mandate.
Lockdown issues aside, serious questions need to be asked of the club’s recruitment strategy for this season.
The signing of Daniel Sturridge, on a seven-figure deal, looked excellent value for money on paper – but he has a body made of glass and has spent more time on the pine than on the pitch.
Daniel Sturridge (Photo by Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images)
Adrián Sardinero has been played out of his natural position and looked like yet another overpaid visa player.
Brandon O’Neill is a proven midfielder, but his season is over due a devastating injury.
Jack Clisby may not be spectacular but he possesses work-man like quality – perhaps the best of the recruits.
Brad Jones is 40 years old, Nick Fitzgerald is onto his sixth A-League club, while the likes of Pacifique Niyongabire, Mitch Oxborrow, Aaron Calver, Antonee Burke-Gilroy and Darko Stanojevic all try hard but lack the end product required
The new coach until the end of the season is a name familiar to the club as well as a league fans, Ruben Zadkovich.
Zadkovich served his apprenticeship with Broadmeadow in the NSW NPL, before joining the Glory coaching group in 2020 and will have the almost impossible task of trying to salvage something from this season.
The club are rock bottom and a whopping ten points off sixth place, however they have 11 games left with the majority of matches at home – a finals place is not mathematically out of the equation yet, but Zadkovich’s first dilemma is trying to find goal scorers.
Bruno Fornaroli is carrying this burden on his own, scoring more than half the teams goals this term – opposition sides know If you keep Bruno quiet, the rest will struggle.
Should the club continue to show no signs of improvement, Zadkovich will need to look at playing more local Western Australians who can be building blocks.
Josh Rawlins has been a standout in defence, he’s the best teenage right back in Australia and a move to Europe beckons.
Callum Timmins is finally living up to the potential he had as a junior at Birmingham City and is a mainstay in the centre of the park
Joshua Anamoso was a reliable scorer at NPL level and has x-factor about him that will trouble teams coming on as an impact sub. Daniel Stynes and Giordano Collo both are technically very good, but have divided fans with their inconsistency.
Then there is Cameron Cook
One of the best young goalkeepers in Australia, Cook was highly regarded in South Australia but released due to the sheer amount of generational goalkeeping talent Adelaide United has.
He has played for the Glory five times this season and has shown his full repertoire of saves with hands and feet, but – like any young goalkeeper – has also made some shocking errors.
For the future of the Glory, they are far better served starting Cook than the two others 40-year-old glovemen on the books.
With one of the highest ticket prices in the league and an owner actively looking to sell the club, the days of glory for Perth supporters could be years away.
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