Perth Glory are confident Thursday's crucial Hyundai A-League match will be the last one key duo Liam Miller and Shane Smeltz miss with nagging injuries.
Perth Glory are confident Thursday's crucial Hyundai A-League match will be the last one key duo Liam Miller and Shane Smeltz miss with nagging injuries.
The United game will be the third straight match Smeltz has missed with an ankle complaint, while Miller is yet to return from a hamstring injury he suffered in Perth's 2-0 win over Newcastle on February 18.
Their continued absence is a significant blow for a Glory side which will also be without former Australian marquee Mile Sterjovski, who has agreed to terms with Chinese side Dalian Aerbin.
Perth will be desperate to consolidate their spot in the top six after last weekend's 3-0 loss to Brisbane, as Ian Ferguson's fourth-placed team (34 points) is coming under increasing pressure from Melbourne Heart (33), Newcastle (31) and Sydney (30) with just four games left.
But Ferguson believes the team can perform much better without Smeltz and Miller than they did against the Roar and said he was confident they'd be return after that.
"That's the plan [they'll be back next week]," the coach said.
"After this game we've got a 10-day rest and they'll be doing their rehab stuff and hopefully they can get to a level where they can be back in the first team."
"Obviously [Smeltz's ankle] injection hasn't worked. We hoped it would have a better effect than it has had but it hasn't, so we need to give him the rest that he needs."
"Miller has been working reasonably hard so hopefully he should be okay for the following game."
In better injury news for the Glory, Josh Mitchell is back in their squad after struggling with a knee injury for several weeks, while Scott Neville is also edging closer to a return.
Although Perth have beaten Adelaide in both their meetings this season - 1-0 at home in October and 3-0 away in January - Ferguson said they would need to perform much better than they did in their previous encounter against the ninth-placed Reds, whose final hopes are all but over.
"We rode our luck in the last game and we could've been down 3-0 before 15 minutes," he said.
"We've got to make sure that we go out and we start right this time. It's a massive game for us and we've got to go out with the right frame of mind."
Meanwhile, Ferguson said he was saddened about the demise of Gold Coast United, who had their license terminated by the FFA on Friday.
He said the FFA needed to ensure the Queensland club could play out the season in some form, including when the Glory are scheduled to play them away on March 18.