Gold Coast United coach Miron Bleiberg believes that his team’s searching pre-season will give it the edge when it clashes with Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.
Since the players began to come together in April, United has enjoyed an unbeaten run of 19 matches including a 2-1 come from behind victory over Fulham FC.
“I believe we come into the game even better than the pre-season results show and we are hungry,” he said.
“Our advantage is that apart from our injured players we have players who are fully fit having played all those games.”
“The key players from the Roar probably don’t even have a full game under their belt, so from that point we have an advantage.”
Although the new side has the fitness edge there is no escaping the fact that the majority of Brisbane’s squad has been playing together for at least a year.
The Roar are a more experienced side and experience will take them a long way when they take centre stage in front of a big Brisbane crowd.
“We have five or six players that will be running out onto Suncorp Stadium for the first time and that could be intimidating,” Bleiberg said.
“Experience counts for everything, compare the experience of the two captains, Craig Moore is a Qantas Socceroos captain, Jason Culina is in his first month as a captain.”
“Compare the playmakers, Charlie Miller is very experienced, our playmaker Brazilian Robson is only 22 and doesn’t speak English.”
“Danny Tiatto is an ex-Qantas Socceroo, our left fullback is Adama Traore who is 19 years old and just landed from the Ivory Coast a few weeks ago.”
“So from this point of view we can’t compete with the Roar but at the end of the day quality of preparation will prevail.”
