JETS coach Branko Culina was stumped when asked if he had a ready-made replacement for Michael Bridges after the influential target man was ruled out of tomorrow's game against Wellington at EnergyAustralia Stadium.
"Can we have an easier question, please," Culina offered.
"It's difficult. Michael plays that role better than anyone in our club, there is no question about that.
"His movement off the ball, his ability to hold the ball up . . . that is what we haven't got."
Culina had intended to employ the tactics which were successful in the 2-0 win over North Queensland Bridges at the point of a three-pronged strike force, flanked by Labinot Haliti and Sean Rooney.
But he has been forced into a rethink after the former Leeds star aggravated a hamstring injury at training yesterday.
"I would have preferred to play the same way we did against Fury," Culina said.
"I think Wellington, in many ways, play similar to Fury. Tactically that would have suited us, but we will have to reconsider that."
Veteran Sasho Petrovski (ankle) is also sidelined, leaving little-used Dutchman Donny de Groot and Jason Naidovski as the other striker options.
But Culina indicated that without a target man he was most likely to revert to a 4-4-2 formation with Rooney and Haliti paired up front and young gun Ben Kantarovski the new face in midfield.
"If you haven't got it, you have to play a different type of game," he said.
Kantarovski spent the past fortnight in Indonesia leading the Australian under 19s to qualification for the Asian championship next year.
The 17-year-old, who played every minute of Australia's five games, has slight swelling in his left knee and was rested from training yesterday.
"It's important that he freshens up," Culina said. "He played as a stopper over there and didn't exert himself as much as if he'd played in midfield. I was a little bit disappointed that he played all those games. I had hoped he would have been rested at some point.
"Ideally we would have liked to give him a week off, but he is a key player for us."
Despite the heavy workload, Kantarovski said he was looking forward to returning to the Jets, where he will likely partner Fabio Vignaroli in the centre of the park.
"I'd like to think it was more exciting than a heavy workload," Kantarovski said. "It's a disruption, but it's also a big learning curve playing international football."
The Jets were thrashed 3-0 by Wellington 19 days ago in New Zealand, but Culina was confident a return to home soil and the chance to record consecutive wins would be the catalyst for a much-improved effort.
"The most important thing is putting back-to-back wins together," Culina said.
"For us to be a team which is seriously considered for finals we have to be able to do that. In Wellington, it was our worst performance of the season.
"Our pressure without the ball was terrible. We allowed them too much space, they had time to turn with the ball and run at us.
"Since then we have worked on a lot of things."
Wellington will arrive on a high after six of their players took part in New Zealand's historic 1-0 win over Bahrain a week ago, a victory which sealed the All Whites a place in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
"You don't put the euphoria of last weekend's match behind you, but you have to realise that football can be a great leveller," Phoenix and All Whites vice-captain Tim Brown said.
"We've obviously achieved something special as New Zealand internationals but that doesn't make us all of a sudden better players, or players that don't have to show up to play another game this weekend.
"The worst thing we could do is go to Newcastle and think we're more special than we are because we could be embarrassed."
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