Perth Glory coach Adam Griffiths provides injury updates on Nicholas Pennington, Tom Lawrence and Lachie Wales

Injuries to key attackers are threatening to derail Perth Glory’s season, but coach Adam Griffiths is hoping his squad depth can come to the fore. While star attacker Tom Lawrence is progressing well and Griffiths is confident Nicholas Pennington will play some part in Friday’s clash away to Adelaide United, winger Lachie Wales’ injury-afflicted season has continued. Centre-back Brian Kaltak is suspended for the Adelaide game following his red card against Newcastle, but potential replacement Zach Lisolajski is nursing a knock — although he is yet to be officially ruled out. Lawrence is battling plantar fasciitis and is set to miss his second straight match against the Reds at Coopers Stadium, but Griffiths said the former Derby County captain’s recovery was going well. “He’s feeling quite positive about it. He’s taking the precautions. We’ve given him certain types of treatments, and he’s stepping through those hoops,” he said. “We’re expecting him to start to do some form of training next week and testing that, and then if he everything goes well, then he starts to progress further. It’s one of those week-to-week type of propositions.” Pennington and Wales were omitted from Friday’s 3-1 home loss to Newcastle, but while Griffiths had positive news on Pennington’s groin issue, Wales’ knee injury could be more of a lengthy issue. Wales’ 30-minute spell off the bench against Macarthur less than a fortnight ago was his first match back from a serious hamstring injury, which had sidelined him for two months. “Nico is definitely going to be available this week, which is exciting for us. Lachie is unknown, but I believe that it’s something more significant than that,” Griffiths said. With no Lawrence or Pennington against the Jets, Perth’s front three of Adam Taggart, Sebastian Despotovski and Jaiden Kucharski struggled against Newcastle. But even without Lawrence and Wales for the looming clash with Adelaide, Griffiths believed there were players within the squad who could help replace the pair in the aggregate. “We want creatives in those moments — Nico and Tom provided that,” he said. “We have to adapt and look for solutions with other players that can help achieve those moments, but there’s also other areas of our game we can try to utilise and bring in based off the players that are available. “It’s something that we’ve been looking at this week, and how we can be better in those final third actions, somewhere where we felt we progressed the ball well last week, but really struggled when the creative moment needed to happen.” Perth struggled in the middle of the park against the Jets as they lacked Lawrence and Pennington’s ability to drop deep and augment the midfield, but Griffiths said they would look at solutions to aid central duo Will Freney and Gio De Abreu against Adelaide’s three-man midfield. “We want them to be positioned at certain angles, to try to play forward. Sometimes that’s not happening. We need to improve those areas, playing forward, thinking forward more often, and when we progress that, we want to speed it up,” he said. “There are constant layers you constantly have to improve. I felt our progression has improved in terms of control, but then that final moment to really take the game to the opposition needs to improve further, so we’ve been addressing that.”