Adelaide United is hopeful striker Lloyd Owusu can overcome his neck injury and provide some grunt against the ultra-competitive Central Coast at Hindmarsh Stadium on Friday night.
The Reds are already set to be boosted with the return of skipper Travis Dodd and left midfielder Cassio from injury but the club is placing plenty of importance on Owusu’s physical presence and attack in the box.
United coach Aurelio Vidmar says the former Ghana international was a good chance of retaining his place in the side and would be given until the last minute to prove his fitness.
“At the moment he’s 80-20 to play but once again he needs to feel comfortable with it. For me I would just play him but at the end he’s got to say ‘Look I can’t head the ball, or I can’t do this or I can’t do that’ and if that’s going to be detrimental to the team then he can’t play,” he said.
Vidmar said Owusu’s style made him the perfect player to take into battle against the Mariners.
“He’s competitive and unfortunately the league is like that. If you don’t compete, if you don’t want to get nasty and roll up your sleeves and do all the hard things, you just can’t play,” he said.
“Here in Australia it’s physical, it’s just an Australian nature that it is physical. Central Coast is certainly a good team, they do that well but they also play some decent football.”
“They are not sitting third on the table for being donkeys.”
The Reds coach said his side was ‘lucky’ to gleam a point from its game against North Queensland in Round 4, ‘happy’ to get draw with Wellington Phoenix last week but admitted his team was ‘desperate’ to record its second win of the season.
“We’ve been getting into those positions in the front third and just our execution has been letting us down,” he said.
“Hughesy (Adam Hughes) had a couple of chances to score, he’s had a couple of chances in most games, he could’ve had three or four goals by now so it’s just one of those things we need to be really ruthless in front of goal.”
“Certainly last week we’ve taken some massive steps forward and now we really need to get into the face of Central Coast because they are a pretty competitive side, probably one of the best in the league at never giving up.”
“We just need everyone contributing and if we get that we’ve got no problems.”
