"You get smashed in the face" - City boss Vidmar cautions against overlooking Roar

The form suggests that Melbourne City's men should have little to fear when they host Brisbane. But as Aurelio Vidmar observed, if you get too comfortable in football, you get "smashed in the face".

A quick glance at the A-League Men table would suggest Melbourne City has little to fear from Brisbane Roar’s visit to AAMI Park. It’s second against bottom, after all. But as Aurelio Vidmar was at pains to observe on Friday, football is a funny old game and a sense of complacency is almost asking for a reality brick to the face.

As the season's halfway mark nears, City enters Saturday’s contest as the league’s form side, sitting second on the table, riding a seven-game unbeaten run and, despite the injury crisis gripping their ranks, having comfortably dispatched Wellington and Western United in their two most recent fixtures. Brisbane ignominious, still winless season, meanwhile, is beginning to re-write the record books as pressure builds on coach Ruben Zadkovich and the club’s brass; their 1-0 loss to Newcastle midweek giving them sole possession of the longest home losing streak in league history and their two points representing the fewest any side has held at this point of the season since its 2005 birth – both records claimed from the historically bad New Zealand Knights.

But as turgid as the Knights were in the A-League’s debut season, even they got one win in that campaign and it wasn’t exactly one to sneeze at: heading into Gosford and defeating eventual grand finalists the Central Coast Mariners 2-0 thanks to goals from Simon Yeo and Sean Devine. And with a trip to face top-of-the-table Auckland next on tap, this fixture could very easily be overlooked and become something of a trap game.

So while Vidmar knows that the expectation will be that his side takes the three points he cautioned those need to be earned, not given.

“We can only prepare the [players] mentally as best as we possibly can,” said the coach. “We've spoken about the importance of it, it’s certainly a tricky game. And football is funny, sport is funny. When things are going well, if you get too comfortable, you get smashed in the face. We've got to be mindful of that.

“I think our work ethic at this point has been fantastic. If we roll up with the right attitude, with a good work ethic, we should be fine. But you just don't get something for nothing. You have to do the work.

“It's probably a [game] where everyone thinks, oh no, you should just win. But it just doesn't work like that. We have to be focused. We have to pay a lot of attention to the small details.

“They're a good footballing team. They're a very good mobile team. Up front they're dangerous. They had a good result against West Sydney and also pushed Adelaide. Last week they probably could have got something out of the game [against Newcastle] as well. So it's such fine margins.”

In something of a small mercy for Vidmar, while the long list of injuries he needs to contend with won’t shorten heading into this game, nor their trip to Auckland the week after, it hasn’t grown in the wake of his side’s win over Western.

The coach flagged that a few players would, if possible, need to be managed during the game given the loading they have experienced across a busy run of four games in 12 days – established Steven Ugarkovic, Nathaniel Atkinson, Callum Talbot, and skipper Aziz Behich asked to shoulder an extra load as their veteran teammates went down – but with a more regular run of one-game-a-week football resuming following the Roar clash, respite was near.

“Everyone's pulled up well,” said Vidmar. “We've had a couple of light sessions since then and another one this morning. And at this stage, everyone looks fine and coming at the end of a pretty tough period this fourth game in a couple of weeks. But really good, really good spirits, good focus.

"We just have to be mindful of a couple of guys that have had a lot of minutes that maybe [need] a little bit of rest or [for who] reducing minutes might be beneficial for them in the long term. But they all want to play. As soon as you say how are you feeling, they say I'm feeling fantastic, I'm feeling great, and I'm ready to go.

“That's really positive, that the mindset is like that, that they want to play. And then at the end as a head coach, you have to make decisions and and live with those decisions. But yeah, as I said, it's a tricky game, and looking forward to it.”

Given that almost two teams worth of attacking options – Mat Leckie, Jimmy Jeggo, Yonatan Cohen, Andrew Nabbout, Max Caputo, Alessandro Lopane, Marco Tilio, Andreas Kuen, and Jayden Necovski – have all been ruled out for various periods through injury, Vidmar has already flagged that he and City higher-ups would examine potential reinforcements when the transfer window opens on January 16.

For now, however, the coach says that no arrivals, or departures, were in place. Instead, expect the old cliche of ‘as good as a new signing’ to get a good run here and elsewhere in the coming weeks.

“At this stage, no one is coming in and no one is leaving,” Vidmar said. “But that can change, and once the window opens I can't promise anything. But at this stage, there's no indication that anyone's coming or anyone's going. The only ones who are coming are Leckie, Tilio, Cohen, Caputo, Lopane etc.

“Leckie and Caputo would be probably [returning] around [City’s January 25 fixture with Macarthur]. So they will join the group next week and we’ll assess whether one week of training is enough or if they need a second week. But they're pretty close.”

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