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AAP
AAP
Sport
Anna Harrington

Reds eye ALM season springboard

Coach Carl Veart says Adelaide United are primed for an A-League Men season surge. (AAP)

Coach Carl Veart believes Adelaide United's gutsy efforts on the road can prove a springboard into the second half of their A-League Men season.

The Reds backed up Saturday's last-ditch draw with Wellington by snatching a late victory over Melbourne City on Tuesday, propelling themselves into third on the table.

"This road trip that we're on, three away games in one week, it's a tough trip against three quality sides," Veart said.

"We managed to get a point against Wellington on Saturday and then to come here, to the champions and get three points, it's tremendous

"We've set ourselves a target of what we need to get to and once we get through these three away games, we can set ourselves up because then after that we've got eight home games out of the 12 (remaining matches).

"So we're really looking forward to a big push in the second half of the season."

Adelaide will head home before travelling to NSW later in the week to face Macarthur FC on Saturday, with more rotations likely on the cards.

"Some of the boys tonight put in a huge shift again," Veart said.

"Some of the older boys will be very sore I would say, so I would say we'll be rotating those players.

"That's what we did tonight with Isaias and Juande, we didn't want to burn both of them out.

"So hopefully they both pull up okay and are good to go on Saturday."

New recruit Zach Clough is expected to continue to build after playing a half off the bench.

"Zach has been with us just over a week and a half or so so it's going to take him a little bit of time to settle in," he said.

"But you saw his quality tonight: his positioning, the way he moves the ball.

"He looks for those killer passes which is something we've been lacking, to have someone that plays those passes.

"The more minutes that we get into him we can see that we're going to have a very good player there."

Clough was brought in as a replacement for skipper Stefan Mauk, who is awaiting a visa on a move to Japan, which Veart expected to come after the February 26 home game against Central Coast.

He said on-loan Brentford youngster Lachlan Brook, who missed the game, had issues with his body after struggling to re-adjust to Australia's hard pitches.

Brook could be in contention to feature against Macarthur.

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