Melbourne City will be out to catch the travelling Perth Glory off-guard when they meet on Friday at AAMI Park.
Fresh off the bye, City hosts a Glory side who sit bottom of the table and return to Melbourne for the second consecutive week.
City has been this season’s fast starters – leading the competition in goals scored (eight) and conceded (two) inside the first half.
While the same cannot be said about the side’s second halves, Mombaerts says this is one of the costs of playing high-risk football.
“We need to improve this, but it’s also our style,” he said.
“We take some risks so we can’t do this and expect to score three-or-four and not concede.
“But in some situations, we need to be more accurate defensively we know that, but we worked on this and I hope we will be better on this in the future.
“We know that we have focused on offensive fazes to be good at this and maybe there is an unbalance…now we try to find a good balance.
“It’s always good to start well we know but it’s also good to finish well.”
The significance of the occasion is heightened by the return of former City captain Bruno Fornaroli.
Fornaroli still holds the club’s goalscoring record – scoring 57 goals in 83 appearances across all competitions, with Socceroo and current talisman Jamie Maclaren fourth on the list with 20.
Mombaerts says he has not prepared a “special plan” for Fornaroli and will not adapt his philosophy to counter a possession-based Glory side.
“No, we don’t have a special plan,” he said.
“We can say that Fornaroli is a hero but they also have some good players so we can’t have a plan to do this – the best for us is to be concentrate on what we have to do to keep our style.
“We never our change our style…we try to keep our offensive options and to play Perth we know it’ll be a tough game because they are a good team.
“They don’t have the results but it’s also the beginning of the season, we’ll keep our ideas and philosophy and try to do as we’ve done before.”
