New Perth Glory striker Branko Jelic is settling into life in the Hyundai A-League and has no doubts the Glory can start turning winning positions into actual victories before too long.
The Glory again missed a terrific chance for a win when they squandered a 2-0 lead against Gold Coast United at ME Bank Stadium on Sunday, with the league newcomer hitting back with a goal early in the second half and then a lucky one in the 90th minute to secure the draw.
Jelic scored his third goal of the season in the 14th minute in his first Hyundai A-League campaign after an impressive career in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, China and Germany.
The 32-year-old is enjoying the chemistry he is developing with Mile Sterjovski up front and feels it will only keep getting better – starting with the next two away matches against the Brisbane Roar and Newcastle Jets.
“I expect that they will be tough games for us because we are under a little pressure. We’ve been playing a lot better than the results show and we need to make focus on this game with Brisbane, and then think about the next game with Newcastle,” Jelic said.
“Mile and me understand each other very well and I hope we can get more results. In the first six games we showed that we understand each other well and we just need to keep going. It should keep getting better.”
Only coming away with one point against Gold Coast last Sunday was tough to take for the Glory, but Jelic was at least happy to score again and has seen enough from the team to believe it deserves to be higher on the table than seventh position.
“It was nice in the first half to score a goal again and for us to lead 2-0, but the end was disappointing because we deserved more than one point. Over the first six games we deserved much more than seven points, but I expect in the next games we will get more points,” he said.
“They scored fast in the second half to make it 2-1, then we had some chances but didn’t score and in the last minute what happened, happened. We might have lost a bit of concentration and we expected the referee to show a foul for us, but the game is played for 90 or 92 minutes and we lost because of concentration.”
Perth didn’t play well in their opening encounter against Adelaide United but was unlucky to lose to Wellington away, before beating Newcastle and Melbourne at home and losing to Central Coast in tough circumstances because of a late mistake from keeper Tando Velaphi.
The Glory has looked good outside of a couple of lapses in games and Jelic is looking forward to the rest of the 2009/10 campaign.
“Our opinion is that we’ve played well in all games except maybe the first one against Adelaide, and we haven’t had enough luck in my opinion. In the future we should get more luck and we will keep playing our game,” he said.
“The fans can see that we play nice football and create many attempts. We just need more luck especially in games away. We need to keep believing in ourselves and the results should come.”
