A 3-0 victory against Fujairah last weekend saw the Boss usurp the long-time leaders to take first place now they have fulfilled the pair of fixtures missed because of their run to the 2014 AFC Champions League semi-finals.
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Revenge for October’s 4-3 defeat in the reverse meeting would see Dalic’s men race six-points clear, a potentially pivotal advantage with two-thirds of the campaign completed.
The Croatian refused to look too far ahead when speaking pre-match, however, choosing to imbue his players with belief for the clash at Hazza bin Zayed Stadium.
He said: “Our preference is for the three points, as we are fighting a confrontation in front of our fans and at our ground. My confidence is infinite in all the Al Ain players, with all due respect to Al Jazira.
“We realise how powerful our rivals are offensively and 31 out of their 46 goals have been scored by Ali Mabkhout and Mirko Vucinic. But when we look at the flip side of the team, we find they conceded 30 goals which is a large number through 17 games.
“We lost the first meeting at Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium 4-3, in a game which saw individual errors cost us four goals. We must avoid any individual errors and impose our style at our ground.
“Everything is in our hands and this is a game of great importance for the two teams. But we must recognise that there are nine games left for both teams in the race for the title with 27 points available, so we will proceed according to our strategy of dealing with each game at a time.”
Al Ain are in the midst of a torturous schedule. This fixture will be their fifth in little more than a fortnight now that their 2015 AFC Champions League Group B programme is up and running. They were last in action on Tuesday, earning a creditable 1-1 draw at Iran’s Naft Tehran.
In contrast, Jazira have been able to concentrate solely on this meeting after they were knocked out of the continetal competition during the play-off stages. Despite their draining exertions, Dalic was convinced the high-profile nature of this clash would inspire his players to shake off any fatigue.
Tomorow big match Al Aïn / Al Jazira. 1st against 2nd uae league. Need all the support pic.twitter.com/o9daEiSoJJ
— Jirès Kembo Ekoko (@JiresKembo_) March 7, 2015
He said: “The last confrontation we faced was on Tuesday in Iran and the players are still affected by being tired from the game and travel.
“But when you play Al Jazira, you do not need stimulation because they are big games. Each player looks to participate in them, and I hope that players enjoy the performance as well as playing in our own stadium.”
There is contrasting team news for the match. Al Jazira are sweating about the availability of key defensive midfielder Khamis Esmail, while Al Ain are likey to welcome back attacking inspiration Omar Abdulrahman for only the fifth top-flight appearance of an injury-plagued season.
“I will not care about existing names or which will be absent from the Al Jazira line-up,” Dalic declared. “We have played a full season without Omar Abdulrahman. We respect the Jazira team, even if we face an under-21s team. We face a club and not names.”
