After a tough and unsettled start to their A-League Men campaign, Perth Glory hope to use their early break as an opportunity to reset and launch into the second part of the season.
The Glory will start their pre-World Cup hiatus a week earlier than the rest of the ALM, with Saturday’s 4-0 loss to Melbourne City their final game until December 10.
Last season’s wooden-spooners have one win from their opening five games, all spent on the road.
HBF Park is unavailable until March due to delayed renovations while Macedonia Park requires temporary upgrades to be fit for purpose.
“When you have away game, away game five times in a row, there’s a cumulative loading as well for the players – mentally, physically, emotionally. It starts to take its toll,” coach Ruben Zadkovich told reporters.
“We’re in the infancy of what’s going to be a very big rebuild and for us to have our government put us in a position where we have to start the season with five away games, it just makes it really difficult.”
Zadkovich said he planned to give his players and staff a week off to freshen up and then have a mini pre-season.
He admitted a lack of competitive games would pose a challenge but hoped a run of home fixtures, as well as regaining Mustafa Amini, could turn things around.
“We go into a period where there’s a lot of home games and then the advantage is on our side and get a couple of players back and things can change really quickly,” he said.
“This league, it seems like it’s all doom and gloom, when you lose a couple and you can win a couple and jump the table pretty quick. So we’ll stay really positive.
“We know how early we are in this process.
“Like I said before the season, it will take a couple of (transfer) windows, more than likely, to rebuild a team from bottom of the barrel in the league, to back to where we want to be and where we deserve to be.”
Perth’s start to their season was also overshadowed by Bruno Fornaroli’s messy departure.
Zadkovich hoped to keep getting minutes into young strikers Stefan Colakovski and Giordano Colli but admitted filling Fornaroli’s scoring boots would take time.
“We lost Bruno, he was our marquee striker, he was our highest-paid player,” he said.
“So the focus is who replaces Bruno and that’s the reason why I’m saying it will take time, it will take windows.”