Perth Glory have suffered a major blow, losing livewire midfielder Andrezinho to a hamstring injury at training on Friday morning.
Perth Glory have suffered a major blow, losing livewire midfielder Andrezinho to a hamstring injury at training on Friday morning.
Andrezinho will have scans on Friday afternoon, but according to coach Ian Ferguson, it looked like a serious injury.
“We weren’t doing anything too strenuous,” explained Ferguson.
“We were doing a bit of shape and unfortunately he’s tried a run down the left and cut inside and the rest is history, his hamstring’s gone.”
“It looks as though it’s an actual tear, you don’t go down in that sort of pain if it’s just a little fibre tear, but it looks as though he’s actually torn the muscle.”
“So it’s not looking good at this moment in time but until we get that scan I can’t really confirm anything.”
Glory are preparing for a big Saturday night clash with Melbourne Heart, but may have to use Travis Dodd, who is himself returning from a month’s lay-off with a hamstring strain, in place of Andrezinho.
“We’ve got Tommy Amphlett, he’s come into contention now and also Travis Dodd,” Ferguson said.
“Doddsy, I was hoping to try and keep on the bench and get 30 minutes or so under his belt and to try to build him up over this period of games that’s going to be coming up.”
“But you know, at the end of the day, he’s done most of the pre-season, he’s worked very hard the last two or three weeks and he’s also got 60 minutes under his belt (in the National Youth League).”
“(So) I’ll make a decision probably tomorrow about what way I’m going to go.”
Although the injury has taken the wind out of the sails somewhat for Ferguson, the coach is adamant his side can spring a surprise on high-flying Melbourne Heart, who have climbed into third on the Hyundai A-League table after beating Brisbane Roar 2-1 last week.
“We know the way they play, they’re very attacking, they’re very mobile,” Ferguson said.
“We’ve looked at a few of the videos and there’s things we see that we think we can capitalise on, so we’ll be working very hard this week on those certain things and hopefully we can take them into the game and hopefully try and get a result.”
“They will be obviously cock-a-hoop coming here,” Ferguson added, referring to Heart’s confidence after their win over Brisbane in a typically Scottish fashion.
“They’ve won a few games away from home but the thing is for us, we’ve got to focus on making sure that we’re ready for that challenge and we’ve got to make sure that we’re going to take the game to Melbourne Heart.”
“That’s only right that we do that, ’cause we are at home, we are sitting in a good position and these next two games coming up for us are crucial,” he said referring to the fact his side takes on Central Coast at home in a big pre-Christmas clash on November 23.
