An unchanged Adelaide United line-up remains confident it can beat North Queensland despite having its senior coach Aurelio Vidmar sitting in the stands.
Vidmar received a two-match ban and a $10,000 fine for his beheading comments made last week and starts his exile at Dairy Farmers Stadium on Saturday night.
The Reds coach said his assistant Phil Stubbins would handle the extra responsibility of leading the side but added he personally had minimal impact on the contest once the game had kicked off.
“All our preparation is done during the course of the week, there’s very little in terms of preparation that we do before a game anyway and that’s my style,” Vidmar said.
“I don’t want to leave it to the last minute, give players a million things to worry about because that’s not conducive to them preparing for the game.”
Vidmar was understandably cautious with his responses in this Thursday’s media conference but his dry humour remained.
He said he’d be sitting in the stands ‘wherever they serve good coffee’ and would spend the bulk of the contest ‘pulling his hair out’.
But Vidmar did add his new spectator status would give him an interesting insight into how his team was performing.
“You certainly get a different perspective from the stands absolutely and that’s why Phil generally sits up there for the majority of the game,” he said.
“It gives a good outlook in terms of what you’ve worked on during the week. Unfortunately there can’t be any feedback from me so nothing has really changed for us.”
“I’d love to be downstairs, because you get a better feel for the intensity of the game than you do from the stands, but that will give me a little bit of a different perspective on what’s happening with our movement.”
Vidmar said there was no chance he’d be trying to flout the system, by writing notes or sending messages to Stubbins, during his ban.
“Absolutely not … I’ll be up there on my Pat Malone,” he said.
Defender Robbie Cornthwaite has missed some training sessions with soreness but the Reds are set to enter the clash with an unchanged line-up. It means midfielder Paul Reid will make his comeback from injury in the National Youth League while striker Lloyd Owusu will continue to build his fitness with the juniors.
Vidmar said his decision to retain the same line-up was a ‘vote of confidence’ for the players heading into a must-win game against North Queensland – which like Adelaide – has struggled with its finishing this season.
“Although Central Coast beat them 5-1 it could have been anything really. The Fury had two very good chances before Central Coast scored and they hit the crossbar twice and they had two one-on-ones with Vukovic that Danny saved,” Vidmar said.
“So certainly they are going to create a lot of chances and they always have.”
“If there are gaps in the defence then that’s certainly an area we can exploit.”
