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Glory take positives out of Adelaide loss

3 minute read

Perth Glory coach Tony Popovic expects his team to suffer no ill-effects from their 5-3 A-League loss to Adelaide in Tuesday's match with Western Sydney.

Wanderers coach TONY POPOVIC.
Wanderers coach TONY POPOVIC. Picture: Matt King/Getty Images

The result was far from impressive but Perth Glory coach Tony Popovic is taking positives from his team's heavy loss to Adelaide into Tuesday's A-League clash with Western Sydney.

The Glory were 5-1 down against Adelaide in last Thursday's match but added some gloss with two second-half strikes to reduce the final margin to 5-3.

Popovic believes the team can draw on the fact they didn't throw in the towel when the match was gone when they face the Wanderers at Bankwest Stadium.

"I feel it's a sign of the growth that we've had that under adversity, under a difficult situation, the players really held firm and really tried to get something out of that second half," Popovic said.

"We've got to take that into the next game.

"We're playing the Wanderers, who've just come off a victory. Playing them at their home, they'll have a crowd so it should be a good atmosphere in turn for the players to really cement ourselves where we want to be.

"We want to be in the top six challenging for that title."

The ninth-placed Wanderers head into the match basically knowing it's a case of win or bust for their finals hopes.

With three games to play, Jean-Paul de Marigny's team are four points behind sixth-placed Adelaide and have very little margin for error if they want to sneak into the finals.

German forward Nicolai Muller is facing at least a week or two on the sidelines after suffering a severe concussion in the Wanderers' 1-0 win over Wellington last Friday.

Muller is recovering at home and will be replaced in the starting XI by Kwame Yeboah, but de Marigny is unlikely to make further changes to the team which defeated the Phoenix.

"It will stay the same. Kwame will just step in and he brings a different dimension to us," he said.

"It's a big opportunity for him to start and I'm sure he'll take it."

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