Reds tackle Sydney FC in last road trip

Adelaide United travel to Sydney to face the Sky Blues for its final away trip of the regular season on Tuesday night, hoping to continue the momentum following the successful result against Macarthur FC.

The Reds snapped a four-game winless streak to edge the Bulls 1-0 at Coopers Stadium, courtesy of Hiroshi Ibusuki’s goal.

After suffering a 4-0 rout to Melbourne City, Sydney FC responded by thrashing Central Coast Mariners 5-0 in Gosford to return to form.

The weekend’s results mean both sides are level on points (31) coming into this crucial clash, although Adelaide has played one less game.

Adelaide went down 2-1 to Steve Corica’s men when the two sides last met back in early February.

United has also not won away from home in this fixture since April 2016.

It is poised to be a fascinating encounter played at a high intensity with the race for the top-six really getting down to the wire.

Team news

Carl Veart welcomes back the returning trio of Ryan Kitto, Bernardo and George Blackwood from Covid-19. Jacob Tratt also returned to the main group following a hamstring issue.

Michael Jakobsen and Kusini Yengi are unavailable, but are a step closer to getting back to full fitness. Mohamed Toure remains on the sidelines with that dislocated shoulder injury with Veart suggesting he will likely require surgery and miss the remainder of the season.

Veart on Sydney FC…

We’ve done our planning for the Sydney game. They’re a very difficult side to play against with their movement and the way that they make their runs in behind. So it’s important we get that right, make sure we’ve got some good speed at the back as well.

Veart on rotating the squad…

It’s a short turnaround, so we will be rotating the squad a little bit and we’re fortunate we’ve got a lot of players now available for selection. So we will have a little bit of rotation in the squad to make sure we go there with a very fresh side, so we can be aggressive with our pressing and be aggressive with the way we want to play.

Veart on collecting points at business end of season…

It’s getting to the end of the season and so every point is worth two at this end of the season because there’s so many teams pushing to get into that six… I’ve said this these last four games, three of them are at home, and we still have to have the job in our own hands so if we pick up the points and hopefully we’ll get over the line.