Western Sydney midfielder Mitch Nichols concedes the club's fans are owed an A-League win, and he's out to give it to them against Melbourne City on Friday night.
It's been a month since the Wanderers recorded their sole win of the A-League season, away to Adelaide, and Tony Popovic's side is yet to celebrate three points with home fans.
But there's no alarm at Western Sydney, where coach Popovic shares the near-universal view among the soccer community that strong performances will soon bring points to Wanderland.
"Our football is getting better each game. We need to marry the two now, the performance and the result," Popovic said on Thursday.
Mitch Nichols puts pressure on Milan Smiljanic of Perth Glory during their round five A-League match.Credit: Getty Images/Gary Day
"We feel like we're playing well enough to get results, to get wins. Now it's about finishing the job off."
The Wanderers sit seventh after six rounds, and with the worst goal difference and most goals conceded in the league.
Defensive calamities have plagued the club over the last month, with Borda joining clumsy goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne in the bad books after a howler in their last-out 3-0 loss to Melbourne Victory.
At the other end of the pitch, Nichols says there's more that the forwards can do that would help out their defenders.
"If we put those chances away we take the pressure off the defence," he said.
"The story of our season so far; we've thrown away two victories. We'll put 60 good minutes together and back off for 30.
"We do owe our fans ... [but] we're not far off.
"We're not getting outplayed. We're in the contest. We've been turning up.
"We're just really getting punished and doing schoolboy errors."
The Wanderers will be without striker Brendon Santalab, with the Spotless Stadium match arriving a week too early after a calf issue suffered against Melbourne Victory.
Popovic said he hoped that his side could be the aggressors at their home deck, even against red-hot forward Bruno Fornaroli and on Tim Cahill's first homecoming game with City in Sydney.
"We have a game plan we believe can cause them problems. They'll certainly have to worry about us," he said.
AAP