Perth Glory’s Hyundai A-League squad might have been snubbed by Qantas Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek, but Dave Mitchell wants his players to focus on a good performance against North Queensland on Saturday.
The Glory is currently sitting equal top of the Hyundai A-League table and has Chris Coyne, Mile Sterjovski and Jacob Burns in the team with Socceroos caps to their credit, but all were overlooked for upcoming friendlies with the Netherlands and Oman.
Mitchell is disappointed for his players but doesn-t think it will give them a chip on their shoulders against the Fury at ME Bank Stadium come Saturday.
“I am a bit surprised, but that’s Pim’s decision and he has a lot of players to look at,” Mitchell said.
“He knows the players we’ve got. We just have to win the game and they will still get noticed, they are professional enough that they don-t need that knock to perform even better
“I certainly think that having an A-League game the night before hasn’t helped. From a league point of view, that’s one thing that we might be able to look and think of an A-League break because we don-t want players attracted back to the A-League and miss out on national selection.”
Two straight wins on the road against Brisbane and Newcastle sees the Glory join Gold Coast on top of the Hyundai A-League with 13 points, and Mitchell has noticed an added sense of determination to grind out results this season.
“It’s nice to get a couple of wins under your belt, but we aren-t getting carried away. We have a lot of things to work on and have to pick up the points at home now to make it count,” Mitchell said.
“We have some terrific characters in the team. It’s been a good sign that we haven-t played well but still picked up points and in the past there’s been a lot of times when we’ve gone away, played well and not got the points. The boys wanted to dig and get the points this time, which was great.”
Up front the Glory has been doing well with Branko Jelic scoring four goals and Victor Sikora, Adriano Pellegrino, Mile Sterjovski and Wayne Srhoj two each.
However, Mitchell might consider playing Eugene Dadi for the second time this season as guest player Amaral is again injured.
“Eugene has been a little bit out in the wilderness, but he’s been training hard, is looking good and there’s a chance of him coming back into the squad. There’s no problem changing a winning side. Sometimes you think that you can tweak the side that won to make it better,” he said.
“Amaral has picked up a slight strain and he’s not training. He’ll be out a couple of weeks. We needed him to get some game time and he picked up a knock, which is unfortunate.”
North Queensland might be sitting on the bottom of the Hyundai A-League, but Mitchell has no doubt they are still a quality team, and is looking forward to trying to limit Robbie Fowler’s influence.
“Ian (Ferguson) has got them playing well. Last week against Adelaide they could have been two or three up, but Adelaide held them off and scored on the counter, and then got the second. He has done well with that side and they are better than the table suggests,” he said.
“The good thing with Robbie is that he’s a fantastic character and player. His attitude and desire to play well has been great for the league and him. We have to look to get more players like him in and make it more attractive for them to do so.”
