Adelaide United vice-captain Eugene Galekovic believes Friday night’s clash with the Central Coast Mariners at Hindmarsh Stadium is a must-win game for the Reds.
Despite being undefeated in four games, Adelaide still find themselves second-bottom with only two wins this season.
But the Reds have a chance to jump as high as third with a victory over the second-placed Mariners and Galekovic knows the stakes are high.
“We are always confident at Hindmarsh and three points in a must-win (game) will kick-start our season,” Galekovic said.
“All our home games are must win for us and we want to get three points every time we play at home.”
“We are only two points off second or third so we are still up there … we just need to keep getting those points.”
“We have gone four games undefeated but we just need to win this week.”
Adelaide is missing a number of key players with the likes of Cassio and Dario Vidosic out with injury and Nigel Boogaard suspended for a week following his sending off against the Newcastle Jets last week.
Sergio van Dijk and Evgeniy Levchenko are expected to return from calf injuries despite fresh doubt over the duo’s fitness arising on the eve of the Mariners’ visit.
Adelaide coach Rini Coolen will turn to his local talent with South Australians Fabian Barbiero, Osama Malik, Daniel Mullen and Adelaide-raised Portuguese attacker Ricardo Da Silva set to fill the vacancies in the United first team.
Galekovic was confident that whoever was to come into the side would do their job.
“We know we’ve got a good squad of 23 players and whoever comes in can do a job, so injuries are no excuse,” Galekovic said.
“We think our 23 are capable of playing in the A-League.”
Despite the Reds receiving heavy criticism for a string of struggling performances, Galekovic said the team believed they could improve and get better in a competitive Hyundai A-League competition.
“We want to get better definitely. The first half last week wasn’t up to scratch, obviously the second half was a little bit better, but we need to get 90 minutes of that football then we will start getting better results,” Galekovic said.
“We are eight weeks in and it’s already a third of the way into the season and if we don’t get better soon we are going to struggle, but we believe we can get better.”
