Western Sydney Wanderers coach Tony Popovic has declared his side have “moved on” from last Friday night’s thrashing at the hands of Melbourne Victory and is now firmly focused on tomorrow night’s blockbuster against Sydney FC.
Missing a host of big name players including captain Nikolai Topor-Stanley, Tomi Juric and Matthew Spiranovic, the Wanderers were well and truly thumped by their interstate rivals in the A-League season opener, going down 4-1.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday morning, Popovic said the loss to Melbourne was best left in the past and the focus now was to return to form in one of the biggest games on the A-League calendar – the Sydney Derby.
“We’re preparing for Sydney [this week] and we aren’t dwelling on that anymore. We’ve analysed the game, we know what we need to do and now we are focusing on Sydney,” he said.
“When it comes to derbies, form doesn’t really matter. We’ve just got to make sure we learn from last week, concentrate on preparing well and make sure our performances are much better on Saturday.”
With Topor-Stanley currently on Socceroos duty in Qatar, striker Mark Bridge took over the captaincy role last week.
The 28-year-old local junior echoed his coach’s thoughts on the loss.
“It wasn’t our best performance… thank God that’s out of the way,” he admitted.
“There’s a lot to learn from that but you have to forget about it because if you dwell on it too much this week and take it into the game on Saturday it’s going to hurt you.”
Saturday night’s game is at 7.30pm.
