Adrian Stenta believes Adelaide City’s Reserves will provide a stern test for his Adelaide United Youth Reserves side when the two teams clash on Saturday.
Both sides have recorded two wins to start the season in what is tipped to be an intriguing contest at Adelaide City Park.
United secured a late 3-2 win over Raiders after initially letting a two-goal lead slip, while registering a more straightforward 2-0 triumph over Campbelltown City last week.
“It’s always a positive to get a couple of results early on in the season,” Stenta said when asked to analyse the team’s start to the campaign.
“So it’s been pleasing that we’ve been able to do that.
“I think we’ve steadily been improving, so our performance in the second game was better than our performance in the first game and that’s a key indicator we try and look for as well.
“Not just the result but are our performances improving as well. It’s still very early stages but it’s pleasing to see that so far.”
FIRST TEAM MATCH PREVIEW: Adelaide City vs Adelaide United Youth
However, Stenta added that they can improve on being more ruthless in attack, and delivering more of a complete performance from start to finish.
“One thing is probably being a little bit more clinical in front of goal and taking our chances,” he stated.
“We’ve been quite good at creating some good goal-scoring opportunities and I’d like to see a bit of a higher conversion rate there.
“And probably the second thing would be to maintain our level of performance throughout a match for as long as we possibly can.
“We always know there’s going to be some ups and downs and at times we’re going to be outplayed, but just trying to maintain that consistent level of performance throughout a match is probably an area we’re always trying to improve on.”
As mentioned City are also unbeaten having defeated Croydon and Adelaide Blue Eagles, 5-4 and 2-1 respectively.
Stenta is predicting a hard-fought encounter, but was confident in the team’s ability to implement a successful game plan.
“We’re expecting a tough game,” he said.
“There’s no real easy game in our league, so they’ll be strong and they’ve also started well and we’ve had some good hit-outs against them last year as well.
“We’re expecting them to be a difficult proposition at home, but as always we’ll back ourselves and put some plans into place on how we want to play and how we can potentially hurt them and hopefully we can execute.”
Adelaide United Youth Reserves face Adelaide City Reserves in Round 3 of the National Premier League 2019 season on Saturday, 9 March at Adelaide City Park. Kick-off at 4.45pm.
