Melbourne City goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne says his side will look to rebound from last round’s draw with Central Coast and hand Sydney FC its first defeat of the season on Saturday.
City surrendered a late two-goal lead against the Mariners to come away with a solitary point, but the ‘keeper believes the contest’s positives still outweigh the negatives and will hold the side in good stead.
“We’ll review a few things but I think there [are] a lot of positives to take from the game and we’ll focus mainly on them.” Redmayne said.
“I think we created a lot of good chances, so many one-on-ones, a lot of scoring opportunities, I thought we were very good defensively for 85 minutes and it was just a solid team performance all-round.”
Despite a strong attacking display that constantly troubled Central Coast’s defence, the hosts weren’t able to finish their opponent off with a third goal and were made to pay, with the 25-year-old admitting his side had to become better at closing games out.
“I think we had 19 shots on the weekend and that’s fantastic – we just need that killer edge to put those chances away and the game would have been dead and buried,” he said.
“If you score two goals at home you’d like to think you come away with the three points – we were a bit unfortunate on the weekend but I’m sure we’d resurrect that on Saturday night.”
City will now face a Sydney side still unbeaten but hungry for a win following two consecutive 0-0 draws against Adelaide United and Melbourne Victory.
The last time both sides met in Round 1 at Allianz Stadium, David Villa salvaged a point for Melbourne City after cancelling out Corey Gameiro’s opener, though the visitors may have felt more deserving of the three points after controlling good periods of the contest.
Memories of that game provide greater motivation for Redmayne and his team-mates to hand Sydney its first loss of the season.
“[Sydney FC have] had a similar schedule to us so absolutely, we can take a lot of positives from the game we played in Round 1,” he says.
“I thought we dominated large spells of the game, particularly in the first half so we’ve got a lot of confidence going into that and hopefully we can give Sydney their first loss of the year.”
Melbourne City will welcome Graham Arnold’s Sydney FC to AAMI Park on Saturday 22 November with kick-off scheduled for 7:30 pm (AEDT)