A-League Men: Perth Glory great Jacob Burns says avoiding consecutive wooden spoons is paramount for club

Former Perth Glory captain Jacob Burns says back-to-back A-League Men’s wooden spoons would damage the club’s efforts to portray themselves as having moved into a new era. The former Socceroo said it was time for the team to put their money where their mouth was and turn on-field improvement into three points ahead of a visit from last-placed Brisbane Roar. Glory are 11 points adrift of last year’s tally of 22, which landed them the wooden spoon, with just six games left to play. The one positive is Brisbane — coached by ex-Perth coach Ruben Zadkovich — are three points adrift of them in the race to avoid the spoon, albeit with two games in hand. After beating the Roar in Brisbane for their first win of the season, a Perth victory at HBF Park on Saturday would represent an important step towards avoiding consecutive last-place finishes. Burns said it was a must-win game in the context of their season a second wooden spoon in a row would significantly hurt the club moving forward. “It’s way more damaging than people realise, and maybe (people) within the walls realise,” he told The West Australian. “The optimism in new ownership and all the new players being brought in, for it to not work and then fans to go through that whole sense of optimism and hype to get that spoon again, would be significant in trying to build further trusts and relationships moving forward with your members, it could be quite damaging. “They’ve got to be going all out, knowing that Brisbane have got games in hand. This is a massive game for them, avoiding that and breeding some sense of confidence in their result to be able to kick them on and move away from that spoon.” Burns said David Zdrilic’s side had improved on-field since the new year and deserved to have taken more than six points over the past two months. However, the 2012 Joe Marston Medallist they needed to translate those performances into wins sooner rather than later because fans would only tolerate so much empty rhetoric. “You can only hype positivity to a certain extent. Ultimately you’re in the business of winning games, you don’t get anything for a performance,” he said. “They’re over the excuses and the talk of positivity. They’d rather not hear the positivity talk and just get three points. “By hook or by crook, get a result.” Perth have found the net a league-low 13 times in 20 games, with reigning golden boot winner Adam Taggart having accounted for seven goals. And despite the defence having somewhat improved from the start of the season, Glory have also shipped the most goals at 45. “The most important thing is they definitely need to stop leaking goals,” Burns said. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what they do with the ball or how much better their structure looks, and good chances created, you just can’t give away goals. “The defence has been the Achilles heel. It was the Achilles heel from last year, which they never resolved or fixed. “That should have been addressed from last season coming into this season, they still haven’t found the right balance and right calibre of player or system or style in order to prevent goals being scored against.”