Melbourne City defender Osama Malik says he is not nervous about coming up against former club Adelaide United on Friday night.
Malik signed for City near the end of the January transfer window in exchange for Stefan Mauk. The 25-year-old will play against the Reds, now top of the league, back at their home ground of Cooper’s stadium.
“Not [nervous] at all to be honest, leaving six weeks ago it was always going to be a bit funny playing in front of friends, family and against the team you played with for a long time,” Malik said.
“I’m really excited, I hope I get the chance to play in the game.”
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United had a poor start to the season and were winless for the first eight rounds, but have since gone undefeated to reach the A-League’s summit.
With City sitting fourth and only four points separating the two, it is a must win game for both sides and Malik shied away from the clichés, saying naturally they were looking at the ladder positioning.
“You don’t want to look at the table, it’s hard to ignore with five games to go and this league’s so tight and with a win you can move up on the table,” he said.
“There was a lot said about the start Adelaide had, I didn’t think the team was playing particularly badly.
“I know the team was losing, conceding goals and not winning but if you look at some of the games, they weren’t as bad as what people were making it out to be.
“If John van’t Schip wants to talk to me (about their tactics), I’ll fill him in with what I know.
“We’ve got the quality in our team, if we focus on our own game and do well, we’ve got the quality going forward to cause some real problems.”
Malik also spoke about the duty of ironing out the defensive fractures at the back, as City have both scored and conceded the most goals this season.
The utility player believes the various roles he can provide is beneficial to his team in the modern game.
“With the quality we have going forward, as long as we can keep our defensive structure nice and tight and stop leaking goals, we’ll win games,” he said.
“We have the ability to score a lot of goals, Bruno, Harry and Mooy going forward they can cause a lot of damage.
“I like being adaptable, I spend a lot of time as a central defender. It’s something I like doing.
“I think in today’s game it’s good to be adaptable because you’re playing different formations week to week with different oppositions.”
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