After a strong start to the campaign, Wellington Phoenix forward, David Williams believes his side can go to another level as they look to make a return to the finals for the first time in three years.
The 30-year-old said the side are not entirely content with their opening half to the season and thinks the side need to ‘dare to dream’ in order to close the gap on the top sides in the A-League.
“I think we have just got fitter as the season has gone on,” Williams said on Evenings on FNR.
“We are not happy sitting sixth, we believe we can be higher,
“We are only sixth but we dare to dream and we think we can finish higher.”
Wellington are fresh off a defeat to the Perth Glory last Saturday night and Williams was adamant the loss was a case of poor mistakes costing them and not being befuddled by the extreme away trip.
“It is a tough ask, but it is no different to travelling on another away trip,” Williams said.
“It just didn’t work out on the night, we played hard, we could have done a lot better and there were a few mistakes here and there,”
“Luckily for us we have a short turnaround on Thursday and we can just try and forget about the Perth game.”
Back in 2006, Williams’ former coach, Miron Bleiberg at the then Queensland Roar labelled the forward the best young prospect since Harry Kewell.
Almost thirteen years later, Williams is unsure where his former coach got his claim from but also went on to discuss his need to move away from the A-League in order to gain valuable experience.
“I don’t know where he was getting that confidence from,” Williams said.
“It is definitely a lot of pressure but he says a lot of stuff and people don’t really know what he is saying,”
“I didn’t have any complaints about him saying that but I didn’t think about it too much,”
“In that system, I had to get away and go join a youth system overseas because we didn’t have one back then.”
Williams also believes there is still a problem with the youth set-up in Australia as he made it clear that more young players will get opportunities as the league continues to expand.
“The problem in Australia is there are not enough teams for younger players to develop,” Williams said.
“You have the youth teams here but youth are playing against youth, they have to be training with more experienced players,”
“I think with at least four more teams, you’re going to have a better national set-up because once they get older, they are playing week in, week out,”
“But right now, it is falling apart at the moment.”
Wellington take on the Newcastle Jets on Thursday night.
