Perth Glory Coach Dave Mitchell says a return home to ME Bank Stadium is just the tonic for his side who have suffered two unlucky defeats on the road to start the season.
Perth Glory Coach Dave Mitchell says a return home to ME Bank Stadium is just the tonic for his side who have suffered two unlucky defeats on the road to start the season.
The Glory are the only team not to have played on home soil in the opening two rounds of the season but are confident of getting their season back on track in front of local fans on Sunday afternoon.
Perth have been left to lament a dubious penalty decision leading to the only goal of the match against Adelaide to open the season while a strike from 35 meters, which took a deflection to beat keep Tando Velaphi, handed Wellington the win in round two despite the Glory dominating play and twice hitting the crossbar.
“We’ve had two difficult away games to start the season and both teams were playing in front of their home crowd for the first time so they were pumped for it,” Mitchell said.
“We’ve travelled a lot and not having been together for long I always felt it was going to be difficult for the team.
“We said we-d get better and better and I think the improvement from round one to round two has been drastic.
“We-ll certainly be looking to continue that positive trend and we-re looking forward to playing at home and putting in a strong showing in front of our supporters,” said Mitchell.
Perth will hit the training track again on Wednesday following an all-day journey across the Tasman that didn-t see the team land in Perth until 9.00pm on Monday night. Players were given a rest day on Tuesday but will ramp up their preparations from midweek and be ready for the Jets come Sunday.
One of the focuses this week will be target practice with the Glory wasteful in front of goal against the Phoenix.
“We are able to create chances but we need to put them away, it-s as simple as that,” Mitchell said.
“The more opportunities you make the law of averages say you-re going to eventually hit the back of the net but we need to be more clinical.
“The hardest thing in the game is to score goals, they change games, and unfortunately we didn-t capitalise and paid the ultimate price.
“We wanted to get something out of the opening two games but we haven-t and now we need to make sure we get the win this week,” Mitchell said.
