''It's nothing serious,'' Lavicka said. ''Brett needs an extra day of recovery because he received a knock on his quad. It was the reason why we rested him and have put him on a special treatment program this week. He will be available against Adelaide. ''He will be all right, he just needs to be careful. He is a senior player so we need to look after him. The physio and the fitness coach are looking at him closely.'' Should Emerton prove his fitness in tomorrow's session, he is most likely to start in a right-sided or central role, though that could depend on the fitness of Shannon Cole, who found a cyst in his calf after the game against Melbourne Victory and missed last weekend's match. That cyst has burst, and Cole resumed light training duties this week, though the coach is unsure whether he will be in contention. ''Shannon is coming back into training but it's hard to say now if he will be available to travel to Adelaide to play there,'' he said. ''He seems to be responding to treatment quite well, so we'll see.

''He did a special treatment program today, tomorrow is a day off and then we'll see on Thursday and make a decision then.'' Cole said it was frustrating to suffer any setback so early in the year but he was confident it would be resolved quickly. ''I'm feeling a lot better now. I just had some fluid from a cyst and my calf seized up because of that, so it's nothing major. There was no point pushing it last week,'' he said. ''The cyst burst and now the fluid just needs to be re-absorbed back into the body. You can't really speed that process up, so I'm just waiting for it to settle. But I'm ahead of schedule. I did more today than was expected.'' While Lavicka has shown a reluctance to play even slightly unfit players in recent years, Cole believes there's some chance he'll be ready.

''It's a day-by-day proposition. If I wake up tomorrow and it feels great, then there's some hope,'' he said. The big question lingering over Sydney's setup at the moment is their absence of a natural left-sided midfielder, though Cole says he's more than capable of filling the job and actually put his hand up to take the role after having spent the majority of his A-League career at right full-back. ''That's the position I've actually always wanted to play and it's probably the place where I feel most comfortable,'' he said. ''Regardless of whether there's a vacancy or not, that's where I want to be playing, so if I'm given the opportunity again, I want to take it.'' Loading ''I've always said I'm happy to play wherever they put me, but I'd like to play further up the park. I spoke to the coach during the pre-season about the possibility of playing more in the midfield.

''The competition for places at right back is quite healthy at the moment anyway, and Vitja said he was pleased I suggested a change. He gave me a chance there in pre-season. I did OK, and it looks like that's where I'm going to be used.''