When John Aloisi takes the field with his team-mates against the Central Coast Mariners on Saturday night he’ll be a friend turned foe, with Sydney FC’s marquee man set to make his first appearance at Gosford’s Bluetongue Stadium since leaving to join the Sky Blues at the end of last season.
When John Aloisi takes the field with his team-mates against the Central Coast Mariners on Saturday night he-ll be a friend turned foe, with Sydney FC-s marquee man set to make his first appearance at Gosford-s Bluetongue Stadium since leaving to join the Sky Blues at the end of last season.
“Very excited,” he said when asked about his return to the Coast. “(It-s my) first time back to Bluetongue to play against the Mariners, I haven-t started against them at all this year.”
With a history of cracking-clashes between the two teams, the 32-year-old is expecting nothing different from this weekend-s Hyundai A-League encounter.
“Everyone knows what games are like with the Mariners against Sydney, and let-s hope its 5-4 again to us, keep everyone happy, the fans, we-d go four-points in front of the Mariners then, and the only people who-d be upset are the people on the Coast.”
While the Sky Blues would definitely be happy with another one-goal win, they will be hoping for a strong performance to keep building on the good work they-ve done over recent weeks to get their campaign back on track.
“Last couple of games we-ve had to come from behind but it shows the boys have got good character, willing to work hard and get through the tough times in a game and come out with positive results,” explained Aloisi.
“The feeling-s good, especially after the win last week (over Newcastle), the confidence is back a bit and it was a good win for us, a difficult game, and this week-s another big game.”
Sydney is likely to take the same squad into Saturday-s match that did the job against the Jets, but with one change to the lineup.
Captain, Steve Corica is expected to be rested and start the game from the bench, with last-weekend-s goal-scoring hero, Brendan Gan to get his opportunity in the midfield.
“He-s a good kid, I think he proved that last week, he came on and had an impact straight away,” said coach, John Kosmina. “We-ve actually missed Terry McFlynn-s run in the middle of the park and Brendan-s not a bad replacement for him.”
Victory against the Mariners will lift Sydney back into the Hyundai A-League top-two, but with seven regular-season games remaining Kosmina wants consistency from his side.
“To get success in any competition you need consistency, you need to string a series of good results together and we haven-t done that for a while, so we need to go up the Coast tomorrow in the right frame of mind ready to take whatever they throw at us.”
The round-15 blockbuster between Sydney FC and the Central Coast Mariners kicks-off at Bluetongue Stadium at 7pm this Saturday.
