A-League Women: Perth Glory coach Stephen Peters not over-planning for Roar duo Tameka Yallop and Sharn Freier

Perth Glory coach Stephen Peters says his side cannot afford to overfocus too much on Matildas Tameka Yallop and Sharn Freier ahead of their A-League Women’s meeting with Brisbane Roar on Friday. With just a five-day break between matches and a flight to Queensland on Thursday, Peters said his side needed to look after themselves first and foremost. While Yallop and Freier will bring international experience and pose a formidable threat for the Glory in the final third, Peters said his side had spent the week assessing their own areas of weakness. “It’s the old cliche for us, we’re concentrating on ourselves,” he said. “We’re trying to generate a high level of performance each week. We obviously improved from the week before this week, so it’s a short turnaround, but we’re looking to generate some more momentum this week in terms of our performance. “She (Freier) is an extremely dangerous player, but they won without her last week, so that just tells you a bit about them.” Among the areas Peters is targeting for improvement are better defending after conceding seven goals in two games and keeping the ball better. “We’ve still got to improve in terms of how much higher up the field we defend, so that’s some stuff that we need to continuously work on and then obviously we would love to have a little bit more possession,” Peters said. “But I think the most important thing for us is we seem quite unified at the moment, they’re all on the same page, and they’re the kind of performances we want to be putting in to build that base.” With a short break and a cross-country flight to navigate, Peters said he was not trying to complicate things too much for his players. “It’s pretty difficult, but we’ll try to keep it simple, and then just add on some things that we weren’t too pleased about from last week that we had already originally worked on. “We’ve done our video on Brisbane and in our session today worked on a couple of things. “Quick turnaround, but sometimes that’s good, maybe less time to think about things and just get on with the show.” Nigerian centre-back Onyinyechi Zogg made her Glory debut as a half-time substitute in their 3-2 win over Newcastle on the weekend, but Peters said she was no certainty to start as she overcame the effects of a plantaris injury suffered in pre-season. “The injury that she’s got is very much a pain-related injury. It’s not a structural one, so it’s just about pain management for her and building that confidence within herself,” he said. “Even the 45, 50 she played on the weekend, I think she wasn’t overly pleased with me putting her in at half-time, but it was required at that particular time. “Hopefully she’s in a position to start; if not, you’ll probably see a similar job from from the weekend, just her presence alone has been a real big plus for us.”