Mombaerts has every right to feel cautious ahead of this Saturday's meeting with the Reds at Coopers Stadium with City's last visit to the City of Churches one that they will not want to repeat. 

Travelling to Coopers Stadium for the final of the FFA Cup on that occasion, City went into the half-time break that evening down 1-0 to Al Hassan Toure’s 25th-minute opener but proceeded to disintegrate in the second-half and hammered into a 4-0 defeat. 

This time though City are in positive form ahead of the coming re-match. In second place on the A-League ladder, they are undefeated in their last four games and have kept clean sheets in their past two fixtures – a 2-0 win over Newcastle Jets and a 0-0 stalemate with Perth Glory.

Of course, City were in a run of stellar run of form the last time they went to Adelaide with the FFA Cup final loss Mombaerts’ first at the club.

Winners of a madcap 4-3 game against Western United last week, the Reds have been boosted by the addition of Stefan Mauk ahead of Saturday’s clash - the 24-year-old returning home to South Australia after securing a release from Brisbane Roar – and will be looking to make it three wins over Melbourne sides in as many weeks.

Alas, they will be without exciting prospect and FFA Cup hero Toure, who returned from the recent AFC U23 Championships with a stress fracture in his foot and has been ruled out for an indefinite period. 

“We know Adelaide is a strong team,” Mombaerts said. “Especially at a technical level, very high. Also, on man-marking, it’s difficult to face because they are man-marking all over the field.

“But we know this, and I hope we have prepared well, as we did for the Perth game, so we are not surprised. It’s a game where we have to be fit – we are – and we have to be tactically to control the game. We will try to do this.

“It’s better to control what we can do; we focus on what we can do. We can have a response, but we have also to adapt against the strengths of the opponent.

“That’s why it’s better for us to have better control with our possession-based football but also be careful when we turn the ball over and in transition because Adelaide is typically a transition team.

“We have to [account for] this but it’s also better to control with our style of play so we have to be confident with what we can do on the ball.