City boss John van’t Schip admits his side is not worried about all of the permutations of the final round of the regular season, saying winning on Friday is the only thing on their mind.
City come into Round 27 with a chance to put pressure on the teams chasing the Premier’s Plate with three points over Adelaide and the boss is squarely focused on entertaining the home fans by picking up three points.
“It’s a very important game,” van’t Schip said.
Hyundai A-League preview: City v Adelaide
“It’s our last home game so we want to play a good game in front of our home crowd and hopefully a lot of fans come out to see us. It’s important to give us the support in achieving a good result.
“The least we can do is make sure that we win. It’s up to the others to see which position we will finish.”
With a log-jam at the top of the table, not only is the Premier’s Plate up for grabs, but the all-important home finals are also on the line and the Dutchman believes a good performance against Adelaide will give his side the confidence leading into the first week of the Finals Series.
“It’s good to have these quality games. The importance of the games, the pressure,” he said.
“As a group, it’s good for us to learn from that, to deal with the expectations. Looking at the last game, we just didn’t deliver when we had to.
“We talked about last week, we know it wasn’t good and in that kind of game we just had a day that we want to forget quickly…”
“The easy thing for us now is knowing you are playing the first game and the thing we have to do is win. Maybe with a bit of luck, we could have a result at the end of the week where we could have something special.”
van’t Schip also confirmed that Michael Zullo will miss the rest of the reason with a fractured big toe from the clash with Josh Risdon in the first half of last week’s game.
“Michael is out for the rest of the season. He had surgery yesterday and he’s going to be out for 8-10 weeks,” he said.
“We look at every option possible and Ben (Garuccio) has played a lot of games there so it could be one of the options.
“We’re always looking to not to change if it’s not necessary but we are also looking at players that are maybe not at their strongest or other players looking fresh.
“We have a team with depth so not every player has their position secured, everybody has to fight and has to expect that if they are not fit enough or not good enough, there is another player to step in.
“They also have to be ready to have an impact when they come off the bench so i think that’s how it is and that’s how we want to have as well so we’ll see tomorrow.”
