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All week the Mariners had focused on Perth’s structure although were caught off guard early as the Glory played with a new system that no one had seen this season.
“We started the game off playing a brand of football that we had not yet tried, for the first 20 minutes we unsettled the Mariners and there are plenty of positives that we can take from that first period because the game was ours” said Perth coach Ian Ferguson.
Coach for the home side Graham Arnold admits that their preparation came undone early and it was really down to the “Mariners of old” who came out to scrape three competition points.
“Other than the first 20 minutes it was a really good performance.
They started the game with a completely different system which had us on the back foot early but the rest of the game I was extremely happy with; the intensity; the way we shut the ball down and Wilko’s leadership which we had missed at the start of this season” said Arnold.
“The Mariners stepped up physically and the plan from kick off was to win the physical battle and to let the rest of the match take care of itself.
“At the start of the week I challenged the players to win their battles physically, we know that Perth are a big strong team and they play tough football, we also knew that if we did the job physically that our footballing skills would take care of themselves and I think that we won the battle today,” said Arnold.
The Central Coast Mariners are a team that have always been known to come from behind and give “110 percent” and the youth of the squad is not letting that attitude slip with the likes of Ibini and Amini becoming dominant forces in the Hyundai A-league.
Leading the physical battle upfront was Matt Simon who bagged himself a much needed goal which brought an end to his eight game drought.
“Matty finished a great game with a great goal,” said Arnold.
Despite never winning a match at Bluetongue Perth Glory are confident they can find their feet early in Newcastle next week and return to the form they found in their last season.
“The Mariners are a tough side and all week we were working hard on taking an early lead, the game wasn’t very fluent but that is no excuse,” said Jacob Burns.
Perth leave Bluetongue Stadium with nothing to show after an ugly loss and themselves to blame.
“We shot ourselves in the foot after great movement and great opportunities early,” said Ferguson.
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