Sydney FC striker Alex Brosque is delighted his teammates have put together the club's best start to an A-League season, but says they're primed to be to finishing even stronger at the end of the campaign.
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The Sky Blues are fourth with four wins and three draws but sit only three points off first-placed Perth Glory, with all sides in the top four - Adelaide United and Melbourne Victory sit second and third respectively - still unbeaten after a quarter of the season.
Graham Arnold's side endured two nervy scoreless draws against Adelaide away and then the Victory at home, but showed their qualities in overcoming Melbourne City 2-1 at AAMI Park last week. They now front up for the season's second Sydney derby against Western Sydney Wanderers on Saturday night at Parramatta Stadium, having won the first instalment 3-2 at home.
While Brosque is pleased to have kept track with the league's elite so far, he has no doubt they'll be keeping pace at the business end of the season.
"There's a lot of confidence around the camp at the moment and not having lost a game yet is a big reason for that," he said at training on Tuesday. "Everyone is feeling good, we're training well and getting results, while we also know that we can still improve at a lot more.
"One of the boys said during the week that you don't want to be peaking too early and I think that's spot on. You obviously want to be peaking come March-April-May next year, but in the meantime, while you're working towards that, you want to be picking up results and the way we've been doing that has been very comforting."
The Sky Blues have shown themselves to be made of much sterner stuff this season than in previous years, either grinding out wins or draws when matches appeared to be turning against them - none more so than in the first derby, where they copped two early goals.
"This is a really important game for us because obviously being a derby game, there's a lot of extra emotion and extra motivation for both teams to want to win," he said. "If we can keep doing what we've been doing and make sure that we get the three points, it really shows our character and how far we've come as a club in the past 12 months because these are the sorts of games – under a lot of a pressure – at the moment we're winning.
"We were down 2-0 against them last time and found a way to come back and show good character to win the game. If we can get the three points again, that confidence will continue to grow and we can keep pushing towards our target for the end of the year."
However, the atmosphere of Parramatta Stadium is sure to provide a huge boost for the Wanderers, with only a small number of Sydney fans - usually about 1500 - able to secure tickets. Having played abroad for the past three years, it will be Brosque's first taste of "Wanderland".
"By all reports it's a very hostile place to go and play. It's very difficult. The fans over there, they're great – they've taken crowd support to a new level I think," he said. "The fact that both these derby games have sold out is fantastic. It will be good to not have that pressure either. We're the away team, they have all the pressure on them and they'll have their home fans on their side. I'm looking forward to it, it's my first [derby] game at Parramatta and I'm sure it will be an exciting one."
However, the striker is hoping those in sky blue will be able to make themselves heard above the roar of the Red and Black Bloc.
"The guys that travelled down to Melbourne [last week] were fantastic and it was good to go up to them at the end of the game and tell them exactly how proud we are to have them come and support us every week," Brosque said. "They'll be out again in numbers in Parramatta. I think it will be a fantastic game and hopefully we can give them something to cheer about."