Perth Glory coach Ian Ferguson believes that the character of the club’s playing group will play a key role in helping drive them back to winning ways at the expense of Melbourne Heart this Saturday.
Perth Glory coach Ian Ferguson believes that the character of the club’s playing group will play a key role in helping drive them back to winning ways at the expense of Melbourne Heart this Saturday.
“The one thing that these boys have got is that togetherness,” said Ferguson.
“I hear people saying that they’re at each other down at training, but if they are at each other it’s because they care, because they’ve got high standards and they’re not happy with where the team is sitting at the moment.
“Their morale and their appetite for the game is as strong as it was when the season started and the spirits in the group are really good bearing in mind where we are at the moment.
“But they realise as well that sometimes football gives you that kick up the backside that you need.
“In my personal opinion, we shouldn’t be in this position with the football that we’ve played this season, but unfortunately we are.
“Now we’ve got to get ourselves out of it and I’m confident we can start to do that by beating Heart this weekend.”
And Ferguson feels that as the regular campaign gallops into its final furlong, the league will effectively split into two separate competitions.
“We are approaching a crunch stage now,” he said, “where six teams are fighting for two spots and it’s going to break into a mini-league with eight games to go.
“We’ve got to keep positive and we need our supporters to stick by us.
“We are starting to play the teams that are around us now and the next four games are absolutely crucial for us.”
In terms of early team news ahead of the Heart clash, meanwhile, Ferguson revealed that recent Argentinean recruit Mathias Cordoba could be in line to make his club debut.
“Cordoba has been training with us and looks good,” he said.
“He’s just got his visa through this week and we’re hoping to maybe get him on for 20 minutes or so on Saturday.
“Unfortunately Jacob Burns (back) and Scott Jamieson (bone bruising) will both miss out due to injury, but we’ve got some good experienced players coming back in, so with some of the younger ones adding some pace, we can put a strong side out and hopefully get the job done.
“Heart always have good players, Matt Thompson is very dangerous, they’ve brought back Eli Babalj and David Williams has great energy and can hurt you at any moment.
“So we’ve got to make sure we try and nullify these players and play to our strengths and our potential.
“We’ve got a good record against them over there and we can definitely take some confidence from that.”
