Champions Central Coast Mariners confident of success on opening day.
After a successful pre-season, Central Coast Mariners Coach Gary Arnold feels his side will be more than ready to face rivals Western Sydney Wanderers in the first game of the A-League season.
The game will be a rematch of last season’s Grand Final which saw Central Coast defeat Western Sydney 2-0 at the Allianz Stadium.
Arnold believes that his side can build on last season’s success and are capable of inflicting another loss to the A-league new boys.
Speaking to Football Australia Arnold said: “Pre-season is going well, we are fit and our endurance is good. We are in decent shape physically as we build into the season.
“We’ve still got about four weeks to go. We will make sure we are in good shape for Western Sydney.
“We had a good hit out against Brisbane last weekend. We’re getting four or five new players into the system and there were a lot of positive signs from it.
“It is not going to happen overnight, but the most important thing at the moment is that we keep fit, we keep working hard and we keep improving.”
The coach feels his new signings are fitting well into the team. Arnold has brought in Former Melbourne Victory man Marcos Flores as well as veteran Dutchman Marcel Seip and youngster Storm Roux.
“It’s good to see Marcos, Marcel and young Storm starting to get the way that we play. We have done a lot of tactical sessions and quite a lot of video analysis to help them with it.
“It’s important early on even if you are not performing to the best of your ability, that you are grinding out results and getting some points and that will be no different this season.”
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