A-League Men: Perth Glory coach Adam Griffiths’ fate will not be determined until after season

Perth Glory will hold fire on coach Adam Griffiths’ future until post-season as the coach lamented the absence of key players down the stretch with their finals hopes all but faded to black. With Glory are all but certain to go a sixth-straight season without finals football and Griffiths’ future uncertain, the coach says he and his squad are in the requisite positive headspace needed to finish the season strongly. With Griffiths’ contract expiring at season’s end, the club will not make any decision on whether to stick or twist on their coach until they have completed a post-season review. Melbourne City’s 2-1 win over Central Coast Mariners on Tuesday night set Glory’s fading finals hopes even further behind the eight-ball, leaving them eight points adrift of the top six with just three games to spare. While Perth are still a mathematical chance of making the finals, they will be eliminated from post-season contention should they fail to beat Macarthur at HBF Park on Sunday. While acknowledging the frustration as Perth’s winless run has reached two months and likely cost them a finals berth, Griffiths said key players not being available at specific times was also a big factor. In particular, season-ending injuries to star attacker Tom Lawrence and winger Lachie Wales, as well as the mid-season sale of Rhys Bozinovski, have hurt Glory. “We’ve been quite competitive throughout the season — with our strongest availability, we’ve been more than that, we’ve been a team to beat,” Griffiths said. “We’ve talked about inconsistencies, and sometimes that is inconsistency, in terms of whether it be the attacking line not being completely available altogether at one time. “I don’t think we’ve had that but for four or five games, and those have been the games that we’ve really performed strongly.” At full strength, Glory have six strong A-League attackers to fit into four roles: Lawrence, Wales, captain Adam Taggart, Jaiden Kucharski, Stefan Colakovski and Sebastian Despotovski. All of them have been unavailable for significant portions of the season due to injury. Only three times this season has Griffiths been able to start four of them together, and Perth have won all three games. On only five occasions have three of the group started together; there have been 14 matches where only one or two of them have been in the starting 11. Griffiths reiterated he was only focused on the final three games and not what will follow in regards to whether the club opt to keep him around. “You just have to deal with it. I’m fully focused on making sure that we prepare the best we possibly can. If I start focusing on what ifs and the future, then I lose focus on this game, which is the Macarthur game,” he said. “My full focus on preparing the team is to make sure that they are ready for that so that we can entertain our fans.” Griffiths said the mood around the club was positive off the back of a 2-2 draw with Central Coast Mariners on Saturday, despite Perth letting a two-goal lead slip. “The players were happy with the way they started the game, and we created a lot of good quality chances. We scored two very good goals. We want to continue to build on that type of mentality,” he said. “Managing the game better is something that we need to address, but the intent of how we want to play for the remainder of the season has been clear in the last two games. “Some defensive actions we need to improve, because normally my teams are built on strong defensive foundations. That hasn’t been the case this year, and we need to improve in that area.”