Dugandzic, who scored a match-winning brace against Adelaide United last week, was on Glory's radar until Melbourne snapped him up this season.

Mitchell said he had first been alerted to his potential a year ago.

"A few people told me about him and we sort of monitored him a bit," he said. "He's very quick, he's a goalscorer, he has good attitude - (there's) a lot of good things about the kid.

"But he's a Melbourne boy and they have snapped him up - soon as he came to training that week, they signed him."

Mitchell added there were difficulties in bringing in youngster from other states.

"Unfortunately not many clubs in Australia are set up to do that and certainly we're not ready yet for that stage," he said. "Because when they are young, you bring them in, you have to house them and look after them and it's quite difficult."

On Sunday, Perth face a strong Melbourne side which has won five of their last six games, and are now second on the A-League ladder.

While influential midfielder Victor Sikora is out injured, Perth welcome back tough defender Andy Todd and marquee Mile Sterjovksi.

"Of all the teams we've played this year I think Melbourne are the best," Mitchell said. "Particularly at home when we played them they had a very good first half. We found it difficult to play against them.

"That's something we are very weary of but having the quality of Andy Todd and Mile obviously boosts any team and we are looking forward to having them back."

Glory are unbeaten at home this season and have a good record over Melbourne, but Mitchell said he wanted to put in a good performance and take the three points.

"We when we played against Gold Coast the other week, we played terrifically well but we didn't get the just rewards which is really disappointing for us," said Mitchell.

"In other games, you haven't probably played as well and you've won. So the three points are important, but it's also important to play well at home and get the crowd excited - so we want to do both."

The Glory coach was also disappointed at some at the defensive lapses which had cost them dearly in some games this season.

He added: "I think some of the goals have been disappointing because it was defensive errors and it wasn't any good play from the opposition which caused them.

"That's the nature of defence, you want to keep clean sheets and then go up and score at the other end."