Newcastle Jets midfielder Kasey Wehrman says his side is confident heading into its first home match of the 2010/11 Hyundai A-League season against the Melbourne Heart on Friday night.
The Jets looked the better team in their season-opening 0-0 draw against Adelaide last week, while the Heart lost their Hyundai A-League debut 1-0 to the Central Coast in Melbourne.
The Jets also beat the Heart 2-1 in a pre-season match and while Wehrman believes nothing too much can be drawn from their previous clash, he said it is the perfect time to meet the new franchise in the season proper.
“You only have to look at the team sheet to see they have decent players there. You’d be lucky to get a team like that now while they have had a loss and feeling a little bit hard done by,” said Wehrman.
“To get them early now and get them over and done with and hopefully get three points in the bag would be great. They will cause trouble I think later on for a number of teams.”
“But in saying that we did clearly beat them 2-1 down there so that is probably in the back of their minds already.”
“And they have to come away from home to try to get a result against a team that has played well last week.”
“So if anything we should go into the game confident that three points are there to be taken if we are good enough.”
Wehrman, who has spent the past eight seasons plying his trade in Norway, said he was impressed with the standard of the A-League in his debut match last week. And while he admitted the Jets were still short of their best, they have the attack to score goals and the defensive set-up to blunt any attack.
“For the first round I thought it (the A-League) was decent. It was hard to judge games by watching them. I thought we were the better team in the match against Adelaide,” Wehrman said.
“We were more positive and we looked to win the game. It will take a few more weeks to get back into things in the A-League but so far, so good.”
“But you only have to look at the chances we created. We created six or seven clear chances some of those were half chances that could have been turned into better ones.
“Defensively we limited them to some pot shots from long range and made a few errors here and there but overall if we restrict teams to one or two chances and we create six or seven you are going to win more games than you are going to lose.
“So defensively we can take a lot out of that game. But I would be happy if we played a game like that each week but having said that we are always looking to improve each week.”
Wehrman also said there was a ‘buzz’ about the club after a good pre-season, a near fully fit squad and plenty of competition for spots.
“There has been a bit of tension at training as people want spots in the team and they are hungry to show Branko and the coaching staff they want to play,” he said.
“It always helps and hopefully we will go into the game with that tension and that hunger to win.”
