Melbourne City head coach Erick Mombaerts has been left with plenty of selection dilemmas with four of his players returning from international duty.
Tom Glover, Denis Genreau, Connor Metcalfe and Ramy Najjarine have all returned following their third placed finish in the AFC U23 championship and subsequent qualification for the Olympics.
All four players have been named in the provisional squad – with Denis Genreau deemed fit to play after suffering an injury – while Adrian Luna will miss the match after picking up a knee injury.
Though Mombaerts’ biggest headache comes in deciding between his goalkeepers for City’s upcoming trip to face Adelaide United.
Glover replaced the inconsistent Dean Bouzanis in City’s Round 10 win against the Newcastle Jets and held his spot until was selected for the national team.
In his absence, Bouzanis has kept consecutive clean sheets – something City had not previously done this season – making the decision all the more difficult for Mombaerts.
“Just Glover has played a lot of games, as for the others Connor didn’t play enough and Denis also and Ramy maybe a little more. Now we have to reorganise and have the players to come back,” Mombaerts said.
“[Glover] just arrived so we will see, but it is still too early.
“[Genreau] is fit but he has had a lack of competition and training, so Denis maybe needs more time to recover.
Captain Scott Jamieson will miss the match due to suspension, meaning right-back Scott Galloway will more than likely move over to the left side of the back four.
This will be the first time the two sides have met since Adelaide’s drubbing of City in the FFA Cup final.
City currently sits in second on the table, while Adelaide has reinvigorated its season after four consecutive losses with wins against Melbourne Victory and Western United.
“We know Adelaide is a strong team especially at a tactical level [it’s] very high and they also man mark and it is difficult to face man marking,” Mombaerts said.
“We know this and we have prepared our game well as we did the Perth game, so we are not surprised by their man-marking. But it’s a game we have to be fit, hard and tactically we want to control the game so we will try to do this.
“We can’t expect to stay high [on the table] if we can’t find a good balance between our attacking style of play and good defensive organisation, so we work on this. We have also a new player and maybe we can change a little bit about our tactical organisation, so we expect to be stronger defensively but also want to be better offensively.”
