Adelaide United’s battle on ‘two fronts’ will continue this week with the Reds considering several personnel changes ahead of their clash against Queensland Roar at Suncorp Stadium on Friday.
the Reds took the weekend off after their 3-0 drubbing of ACL semi-final opponent Bunyodkor but may rest some of their over-worked players for their upcoming Hyundai A-League fixture. They hope to be at full strength when they set off for Uzbekistan the day after the Round 8 clash.
Contenders for a break include the team’s Socceroos squad members Eugene Galekovic, Robbie Cornthwaite, Scott Jamieson and Paul Reid. They’ve been training with the national team and will have had limited preparation with their domestic team-mates heading into the weekend.
Adelaide hasn’t been afraid to mix things up in the past having made eight changes to its starting line-up for a game against Sydney FC back in September.
But Coach Aurelio Vidmar said he was undecided about what to do ahead of the Roar game.
“It has been quite tough with those boys (the four players in the Socceroos squad) away. Diego and (Kristian) Sarkies have both been crook, so it’s going to be a last minute decision on what we do on Friday,” Vidmar said.
“There’s a massive carrot but what we’ve got is a squad that hasn’t played since last Wednesday and come Friday that will be 10 days since they’ve played a competitive game.”
“So I’ve got be extremely careful with which ones I rest, if I do rest them, because that will be two weeks so it is a really tricky one to juggle.”
Sarkies, who has been out of action for weeks with a badly bruised toe, said on an Adelaide radio station he was hopeful of being fully fit and ready to take part in the Reds’ busy week ahead.
Despite the selection issues, Vidmar said the club is focussed on beating Queensland next Friday. His team holds third spot but could slide down the ladder if they lose to their northern rivals.
“We can’t think about what’s going on next week because that’s too far away. We’ve got to worry about wha’s happening on Friday first,” he said.
“It’s another important game and we need to take some points out of it. We didn’t travel too well over there (to Brisbane) in the second round and we were lucky to get away with a 1-1 result so we need to improve on that.
