Melbourne City boss Warren Joyce says he’ll have to manage Bruno Fornaroli’s comeback with caution after the star striker made his long-awaited return from injury on Saturday night.
Fornaroli came off the bench with just under 30 minutes left at AAMI Park with City trailing Sydney FC 2-0.
While he showed some promising moments – and had a goal ruled out for a push on Jordy Buijs – Fornaroli could do nothing as the Sky Blues ran out 4-0 winners.
“It’s managing his [Fornaroli’s] pain really, we just look at it day by day. He’s certainly not had three days training on the trot, so at the minute it’s a bit early to say,” said Joyce when asked about his striker’s comeback.
“Obviously it’s a bonus to get him out on the pitch.
“It’s a gamble at 2-0, you throw him on, because you know how little he’s done really and we’ll just look at that in the coming weeks and see that he gets back-to-back days training.”
City headed into the clash with leaders Sydney in third spot and on the back of a six-game unbeaten run.
And they enjoyed some bright moments early on with teenager Daniel Arzani unlucky not to have given them the lead on a couple of occasions.
But the match swung in the Sky Blues favour when City gloveman Dean Bouzanis brought down Alex Brosque in the box, allowing Bobo to convert from the spot.
Milos Ninkovic doubled the visitor’s lead just before half-time to take the game away from City.
“I thought we played some good football. We were good value, maybe should have been goals up,” said Joyce about his side’s first-half display.
“But you talk about not only them [Sydney FC] as a team that make consistent decisions and we were just sloppy for the first goal and we talked about how we would deal with them and we didn’t deal with it.
“We switched off and gave them the goal and then right on half time gave them another goal but I thought we played really good football. Quite an open game, very attack minded.”
With a Split Round in the Hyundai A-League, City have next weekend off before returning to action against Perth Glory at nib Stadium on Saturday, February 24.
