Influential Brisbane Roar midfielder Thomas Broich remains in doubt for Friday night’s Hyundai A-League clash against Melbourne Heart at Suncorp Stadium.
Influential Brisbane Roar midfielder Thomas Broich remains in doubt for Friday night’s Hyundai A-League clash against Melbourne Heart at Suncorp Stadium.
The German star missed the club’s 2-0 loss to Sydney FC last weekend – the Roar’s first defeat in 37 games – with a heel injury and has still not fully recovered.
Broich trained with his teammates on Thursday but it’s understood coach Ange Postecoglou is not prepared to risk the in-form 30-year-old.
Broich’s absence would be another blow for the Roar who are already without silky Brazilian Henrique (cork) and youngster James Meyer (groin) due to injury.
But Postecoglou is confident he has the depth in the squad to be able to cover the pair’s absences.
“People like Kofi (Danning) and Rocky Visconte will come into it, they’ve been working pretty hard at training,” Postecoglou said.
“If Thomas isn’t right it’ll be an opportunity for one of them, definitely on the bench.”
“We’ve got some options, we can throw some of the young guys in and give them an opportunity, that’s what they’ve been working for.”
“We’re quite confident whatever happens we’ll be fielding a strong enough team to win the game.”
The Roar will be aiming to rebound to winning ways immediately following their first defeat in more than 450 days last weekend.
While questions have been raised this week just how Brisbane react to the rare loss, Postecoglou insists it’s business as usual for his squad.
“What we’ll do is what we’ve done and that is getting to playing our dominating, attacking football, being aggressive and not worrying about the results,” he said.
“Not worrying about our wins and loss columns but just getting back to playing our football.”
“If we do that, as shown in the past, everything else will take care of itself.”
Brisbane skipper Matt Smith added: “We’ve always been about performances, we don’t really look at the scoreboard.”
“We always work on the performance first, that’s something that’s been installed in us from day one.”
“That’s probably the most disappointing thing is that we didn’t perform (against Sydney) the way that we usually play.”
“I guess it doesn’t happen very often, but for us it hurts. We are going to make sure we get that performance right (Friday night).”
