Pleased with his team’s promising start to the season, Brisbane Roar defender Luke DeVere has hailed coach, Ange Postecoglou’s new playing style.
With two solid performances already under their belts – a 0-0 draw against Gold Coast United and a 1-0 win over Sydney FC – DeVere is hoping it will carry on in their week-four clash with Wellington Phoenix at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night.
“Obviously Ange has looked to implement a new way of playing, trying to get the ball moving as quickly as we can and trying to outdo teams with our intensity and our movement,” 20-year-old DeVere said.
“It seems to be working for us so far and hopefully it will work against Wellington.”
Brisbane have also managed to keep two clean sheets in their opening assignments, something DeVere said is a result of the backline combination finding their rhythm.
“At the start of the season we set out a goal to try and get as many clean sheets as we could,” he said.
“Having two in our first two games has been a good confidence booster for the whole backline and an indicator of how well we-ve started to gel together, so hopefully a sign of things to come.
“Matty (Smith) and I had a fair few games in the pre-season to get our partnership strong and we-ve really started to do that along with Ivan (Franjic) and even Milan (Susak) coming in at the end of the game with Stef (Shane Stefanutto) on the left,” he said.
Playing against their trans-Tasman opponents will be a big task for Brisbane with the Phoenix scoring five goals in their first two games of the season and their three-pronged strike force of Dylan McAllister, Chris Greenacre and Paul Ifill already in fine form this season.
That in mind, DeVere says they-re up for the test.
“It-s definitely a big challenge, they-ve got a lot of good players and a lot of big players so we know what to expect from them,” the Australian Under-20 representative said.
“We played them in the pre-season so we-re confident we can get another clean sheet hopefully and continue on with another win.”
The two sides currently sit side-by-side on the Hyundai A-League ladder with four points apiece and DeVere hoped another strong Brisbane crowd would come out to cheer the team on to another victory.
“The crowd was great on Saturday night against Sydney, not only in terms of numbers but the amount of noise they made.”
