Perth Glory defender Chris Coyne says the club’s poor away form is something of a mystery, but one that needs solving sooner rather than later.
Perth Glory defender Chris Coyne says the club’s poor away form is something of a mystery, but one that needs solving sooner rather than later.
However, the former Qantas Socceroo has knocked back suggestions from Mark Bosnich that the Glory lacked commitment during their 2-0 defeat by Newcastle last Saturday, their second consecutive away loss after the Mariners proved too good in a 2-1 result the week before.
“Bozza’s an honest man but I’d like to question that because it’s not fair to question the commitment,” said Coyne before training on Tuesday.
“That’s because this group of players work hard, train hard and we do everything properly, so that’s not a point. I respect Bozza’s views but I have to disagree with him on that.”
And on the away form, Coyne typically didn’t pull his punches.
“It’s not good enough and there’s no excuses because grass is green, the goalposts don’t move and they’re both for each team,” he said.
“Especially with the Newcastle result, we stayed up there for a week so we can’t put it down to flying.”
“I know from experience it (the travel) does take it out of you.”
“Maybe it’s a mindset, maybe we need to go in there a bit more defensively and say, ‘let’s play on the break’, (but) it’s just not good enough, you can’t give two goals in four minutes and expect to get anything away from home.”
Perth suffered another blow on Monday evening, the club receiving confirmation that young defender Scott Neville had slightly torn a ligament in his knee. Neville was seeing a specialist on Tuesday morning, but the club expects him to miss at least a month, with his position at right back to be taken by Josh Risdon.
It’s the second major blow to the Glory’s defence over the last few weeks, after left-back Evan Berger was ruled out for eight weeks with a hamstring issue.
And, the defence will have to be at its best this weekend as the Glory play Sydney FC at home on Saturday night, having seen the Sky Blues score three goals in just over 30 minutes last weekend to secure a controversial 3-2 win over old Coast.
If Jamie Coyne plays for Sydney it will also be the first time the two brothers play against each other.
“Hopefully if selected I’ll see him at the back post and there’ll be no quarter given cos we’re both competitors,” Chris Coyne said.
“We used to kick the living daylights out of each other in the back garden.”
“And it will be exactly the same if we play against each other. We’ll shake hands before the game and have a chat afterwards, but during that 90 minutes there’ll be nothing given.”
