The gravity of Friday's A-League Women game against Adelaide United is not lost on Western Sydney midfielder Libby Copus-Brown who says time is of the essence if her side are to make the finals.
While they have been defensively solid, keeping league leaders Sydney scoreless and conceding just five goals all year, the Wanderers only have six points from their opening seven games.
It's at the other end of the field, though, where Catherine Cannuli's side have issues and Copus-Brown said they needed to start scoring quickly.
"We don't blame our strikers, I think it's on the rest of us for not creating enough chances," Copus-Brown said.
"We look at the stats and we're not creating enough and we need to be a bit more ruthless.
"We're one of the best defensive teams but we need to start scoring goals.
"We focused on defence in the pre-season and while it's amazing we've done that our ultimate goal is making finals and we have definitely made it harder for ourselves."
Fourth-placed Adelaide are one of the teams the Wanderers will have to steal points off if they are to climb up the table but the South Australian side will travel to Sydney boosted by the fact that they are at full strength for the first time this season.
Their head coach, Adrian Stenta, is aware of Western Sydney's issues up front but warned that his side would have to work particularly hard if they were to move past Melbourne Victory in third.
"I'm expecting a really tight game," he said. "Western Sydney have had troubles scoring goals.
"But they haven't conceded many and it's probably going to be a game of few chances so our quality in the final third is going to be very important.
"They're a well set-up team and defensively sound. We will need to be patient and circulate the ball.
"Like most matches, it's probably going to come down to a few key moments and we will have to make the most of those when they prevent (themselves)."
Australian Associated Press
