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saitama – urawa reds boss mihailo petrovic is confident his side can extend its recent run of good form when it takes on defending champions guangzhou evergrande in a crunch group h match in the asian champions league in saitama on tuesday night.
reds are unbeaten in all competitions since losing 2-1 at home to jubilo iwata in their first home league game of the season on march 6 and currently lead the j. league standings with four wins from five.
the 2007 asian champions have four points from three acl games and showed tremendous character to come from two goals down to draw 2-2 away to chinese super league champions guangzhou in their last match on march 16.
“the good form stems from our loss to iwata. that defeat confirmed various things to us and showed us what adjustments we needed to make,” petrovic told a press conference on monday.
guangzhou will need to show significant improvement in tuesday’s game, having taken only two points from three games to sit at the bottom of the group.
“it is going to be an even more difficult game than when we played them away as they will (likely) have to beat us if they want to qualify from the group stage,” said petrovic.
reds’ slovenian striker zlatan ljubijankic said the team has to play like it did in the second half of the away game in guangzhou right from the start on tuesday.
“it’s going to be a big game and we are playing against good opponents and this is probably our most important game so far in the acl,” said ljubijankic. “with a win tomorrow we can take a big step to making our goal of qualifying. i think we are ready.
urawa forward naoki ishihara will be ruled out for the second game of his two-match suspension.
guangzhou coach luiz felipe scolari insisted there was no pressure on his team. although defeat would not mean mathematical elimination for either team, the importance of getting a result was not lost on the brazilian world cup winner.
“there is no pressure. if we win we have a chance of qualifying and if we lose we say bye-bye to the champions league. we know about this. whoever loses the game tomorrow it is bye-bye,” he said.
in tuesday’s other match involving a j. league side, sanfrecce hiroshima are away to winless thai champions buriram united, who will be looking to avenge their 3-0 defeat in their last match.

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In that passage, there are 178 occurrences of the letter "a."
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