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Sydney FC captain Alex Brosque was happy to see the niggle back in the A-League derby against Western Sydney Wanderers.

Sydney FC captain Alex Brosque has welcomed the return of niggle to the Harbour City A-League derby.

Six players were booked in the 1-1 draw at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night, with three of the Wanderers' four yellow cards dished out inside the first 15 minutes.

"I think the last one (derby) didn't have too much of it (niggle), so it was good that it was back," said veteran striker Brosque, who scored Sydney's goal.

"I think derbies need to have that, they need to have niggle and fight. It gets the crowd going, it gets the players going.

"The last derby had a strange feel to it, it didn't have a real derby feel but I think tonight definitely did

Sydney's Serbian playmaker Milos Ninkovic was on the receiving end of a number of crunching tackles, but was philosophical rather than angry.

'Derbies, especially in the first 30 minutes, are always tough," Ninkovic told AAP.

"I've already played so many derbies and I knew what was going to happen.

"Every derby is difficult."

Asked if he thought the Wanderers deliberately tried to unsettle Sydney with their approach, Brosque said, "I think if they did, they picked he wrong team to do that to. I think we thrive off that stuff.

"They had to try something, the last two games this year we played them off the park and played well, so I think they had to come out and show a bit of fight and a bit of character and they did exactly that.

"They tried to put us off our game but they played good football as well."

Brosque suffered a bruised heel in scoring his goal and carried on until halftime.

He was hopeful he would be OK for Thursday's home clash with top-of-the-table Perth.

Sydney have won one and lost one against Glory in Perth this season.

"This is a game that we want to win just to mentally say a lot to the league about our intentions," Brosque said.

Sydney coach Steve Corica said left back Michael Zullo was an 80 per cent chance of returning from injury for that game.