A-League Men: Perth Glory coach David Zdrilic says they will prepare for home and away games the same way

Perth Glory coach David Zdrilic says they will not differ in their approach to home and away games despite the A-League Men’s side road blues over the past few years. The Glory travel to Gosford to face back-to-back reigning champion Central Coast Mariners on Saturday after dropping their opening two games of the season. While the 6-1 thrashing they received against Macarthur in their opening away game of the season is still somewhat fresh, the club’s away form over the past four seasons has been the worst in the league. From the start of the 2020-21 A-League Men season to now, the Glory have won just six of 52 away games and collected just 30 points from a possible 159. But Zdrilic said he did not want to put extra emphasis on away games and said they would prepare in the same manner as they did for home matches. “All the games are the same and with the away trips and home games, we tackle them exactly the same,” he said. “Obviously we travel a little bit further, but so it’s always going to be difficult playing away from home, even if you’re going from Sydney to Melbourne. “Here, different challenges, but it shouldn’t be anything other than thinking that we can get three points no matter where we go.” Zdrilic said the likes of Luis Canga (a full game against Wellington last weekend), Anas Hamzaoui (86 minutes) and Nicholas Pennington (subbed on at half-time) had all pulled up well in the aftermath of the 2-0 loss to the Phoenix. The trio all had truncated pre-season due to injury or in Canga’s case, arrival from overseas, but Zdrilic said the squad as a whole were building fitness. “The group is now starting to come together in terms of having the fitness that we need,” he said. “There’s obviously players that are still not fully fit, and we’ve got a big enough squad now where the squad that will have had enough match minutes in them to be able to put out a very competitive team. “We’re much closer now. The training is better, but also the numbers in the training are there. In the first part of the pre-season, we had, 14, 15, guys, a lot of the NPL youth team players training with us almost exclusively.” While the Mariners have started slowly again this season — they lost their first four games last year before roaring back to win the Premier’s Plate, the grand final and Asian Football Confederation Cup — Zdrilic said their opponents would still be full of confidence. “They’ve got a lot of experience, and in Asia as well, they’ve been playing. This is a team that’s played many games and in a very comfortable, similar system to what they played last year,” he said. “The coaching staff are now in their second season, after having an excellent season last year and pretty much-winning everything, have got a very positive and confident group. “We’re expecting nothing less than a tough fight.”