Gold Coast United captain Jason Culina insists he is fit and ready to take on Perth Glory after sending a scare through the camp when he pulled out of training early on Friday.
The midfielder has a superficial wound on his right foot but said the light training run was more due to the fact that he was backing up after Australia’s defeat of Oman on
Wednesday.
“It’s always good to take it easy two days after a game. The foot is fine, it’s just a scratch,” he said.
After getting their season back on track with last weeks win over Brisbane, the United skipper declared that his team has turned the corner and is ready to reproduce the football that saw them lead the league through the early rounds.
“Every team has been through it, a few weeks back Sydney went through a bad patch and Melbourne obviously had a poor start to the season.”
“We are hopefully coming out of our slump now.”
“At the end of the day we are only two points behind Sydney at the top of the ladder and now hopefully we can start to play some good football like we did at the start of the season.”
By Sunday’s match United will know exactly what it is playing for with a possibility that top-spot will be up for grabs if Sydney cannot overcome Adelaide in the opening match of the round.
Gold Coast and Perth are locked together in second place and there is plenty of spice in the match after United salvaged a 2-2 draw in the 90th minute when they met in Round 6.
“Perth have come great players in Mile Sterjovski, Jacob Burns and (Jamie) Coyne at the back, they are a tough team as we saw in the first game.”
“They came out all guns blazing and deservedly went 2-0 up after we were very poor in that first half.”
In other news coach Miron Bleiberg has indicated that Brazilian import Anderson will fill the void left after the injury to exciting wing-back Adama Traore.
“Adama is one of the main attractions of the team, no Adama is like going to the museum and seeing no mona lisa,” Bleiberg said.
“But I believe that Anderson can be just as effective in that position.”
