Newcastle Jets skipper Ljubo Milicevic believes his side will not be troubled by in-form Melbourne Victory striker Robbie Kruse when the teams clash at AAMI Park on Monday night.
The outspoken Milicevic talked up the Newcastle defence and said they weren’t fearful of anyone in Melbourne side, including Kruse.
“I don’t think he (Kruse) has ever scored against us, he may have earned them a penalty when Kanta (Ben Kantarovski) was playing sweeper and got sent off but we still won that match,” Milicevic told Sportal.
“But he has done nothing against us in the past and I don’t think it will be any different on Monday night.”
“Our strength is our defence as a unit – it starts from the strikers and goes all the way through to the backline and I don’t think we have anything to fear from them.”
“They barely troubled us the last game we played them and I don’t expect it will be any different Monday night.”
Milicevic also said the fact that Archie Thompson has been sidelined with an injury plays into the hands of the Jets.
“Archie is their best player and has been for a lot of years. I don’t think they would have won anything if they didn’t have him in their team,” Milicevic said of Thompson.
“He is the stand-out player in the competition along with Jason Culina. Not having Archie play is a bonus for us. It is one less threat.”
“They (the Victory) have always been an attacking side, they have good attacking players but I think they are vulnerable defensively and we are going to look to expose that.”
The Jets come into the game off the back of a 4-0 thumping against the Phoenix in Wellington but the Jets skipper blew off the loss as a ‘hiccup’ and believed it will serve to refocus the Newcastle side.
“If you take five key members out of any team in the world let’s see how they do on an away trip, especially when you have to travel 12 hours to get to Wellington,” he said.
“But it was a good lesson for us as well. The boys got a taste of defeat again and how much we all hate it so we want to make sure that we don’t suffer like that again.”
“Since then we have been able to freshen up and we have looked very sharp in training this week and we are all looking forward to Monday’s game.”
