Perth Glory star striker Robbie Fowler hopes he can score for the third week in a row in Sunday’s huge home clash against Gold Coast United.
Perth Glory star striker Robbie Fowler hopes he can score for the third week in a row in Sunday-s huge home clash against Gold Coast United.
While Fowler and a host of senior players were excused from this morning-s training session, the Liverpool legend was quick to assure fans that a lighter training load was one of the few concessions to age he was making as he looks to prolong his career.
“(It’s) just a little bit of stiffness from the weekend,” Fowler said.
“Nothing too serious, so just one or two days off you know.”
“I’m on a monitored training schedule anyway, it’s nothing serious, I’m just obviously not as young as I once was and the staff here have been good with me.”
While the Glory’s staff have been good for Fowler since his move from North Queensland in the off-season, the striker’s also been good for the club, setting up numerous goals and scoring twice in the last two weeks.
“I am really happy with the way I’ve started the season.
“I’ve obviously missed a large chunk of pre-season, but game wise I feel good.
“If I’m being honest, I probably would have liked to score more goals but I’ve done all right, I’m setting up goals and I’ve scored a few the last few weeks, so I’m more than happy.”
And at 35, Fowler is still covering running to all parts of the ground, the striker popping up in defence last week against the Phoenix, while also using his superb passing to great effect from the midfield to release players like Howarth and Sterjovski on the flanks.
“In football sometimes you’ve got to move to try and get space and sometimes, you can’t sort of stand with the back four because you can get picked up easy,” Fowler said.
“So you have got to move about and even if it means dropping deeper then so be it.”
The striker will need to be at his best this weekend, though, coming up against Gold Coast in the Iron Ore Cup, contested between the two sides as Glory and United owners, Tony Sage and Clive Palmer respectively, are both competitors in the mining business.
The Glory have never beaten Gold Coast in a the Hyundai A-League and with new striker Bruce Djite in the visiting side to replace the departed Shane Smeltz, Fowler is expecting United to come out firing as they look for their first win of the campaign.
“Last year they were probably one of the better teams in the league football wise,” Fowler said.
“Miron’s (Miron Bleiberg) a very good manager and he will have them playing football again this year.”
“So it’ll be a tough game and I think we’ve seen in the previous weeks, I think any team can beat anyone on any given day.”
“So you know it’s by no means an easy game and it’s one that we’ll go into and we’ll do a lot of work this week and see where that takes us.”
