Perth Glory look likely to be without recruits Josh Mitchell and Michael Baird for Friday night’s opening round clash with North Queensland as both players struggle to get a clearance from their previous club.
Both striker Baird and defender Mitchell previously played for Universitatea Craiova in Romania last season, along with Central Coast recruit Joshua Rose.
The trio opted to move away after a pay dispute with Craiova but Baird has said the club opted to punish the trio for leaving by delaying their clearances to play in Australia.
According to Baird, the matter is now being looked into by FIFA and should be resolved by August 20, but until then the three players will not be eligible to play in the Hyundai A-League and could miss the first two or three matches of the campaign.
“It is a little bit frustrating,” said the 27-year-old striker, who’s previously played with the then Queensland Roar.
“But you know there’s nothing I can do, I’ve just got to keep going and keep training.”
“It’s annoying when the first team’s out there and training and you’re in the second team doing shape or anything like that.”
“The club (Craiova) actually knew that what they were doing and how they’d restrict me from playing and that’s all they had against me, ’cause they breached contract, it wasn’t me or the other boys either.”
“We actually spoke to the club and they said, ‘stay, stay (but) we won’t be able to pay you until March’.”
“I said, ‘well, it’s been four months, it’s time to move on, next phase of my life’.”
“And, they said, ‘well, we won’t let you play’, and they knew they could do it and they’ve done it before and it’s a little bit hard to take.”
“So now it’s in FIFA’s hand in Zurich and they’ve got to judge on the legalities on everything and see where we stand.”
“I’m very sure that it will be in our favour, but it’s just when,” he said.
With former Liverpool and North Queensland striker Robbie Fowler brought into the side, the Glory appears to have enough depth up front to cover for Baird as Fowler can also team up with Branko Jelic and former Qantas Socceroo Mile Sterjovski.
But it’s in defence where the Glory will be badly hit as the club is already without central defenders Andy Todd and Chris Coyne for this encounter against a largely unknown Fury side.
Coyne will miss a good proportion of the season as he’s playing on loan in China with Liaoning, while Todd won’t available until later in the month as the former Blackburn skipper and last year’s Most Glorious Player recovers from a knee injury.
