Adelaide United coach Rini Coolen admitted he needs more time to work with the Reds before they can produce the kind of football needed to avenge last season’s wooden spoon finish.
The Dutchmanm, speaking after the Reds drew 0-0 with Newcastle, said he has only had three weeks to mould the Reds to his style of play and acknowledged the performance was far from convincing.
His task has been made even more difficult with injuries to key players including captain Travis Dodd, Robert Corthwaite and Fabian Barbiero and he was dealt another blow before kick-off with Marcos Flores pulling out with a thigh injury.
Coolen remains hopeful the Reds can produce an attractive, attacking brand of football but added it is paramount United win their home games.
“I hope so. Of course we have to win more games. I think the draw was a fair result but we have to win games, especially home games,” he said.
“But we’re all on the same level and that’s a good start, but we need more time to win games. It’s what we knew from the start. We’ve been working three weeks now but I don’t see that as a problem. Of course we will be better in a couple of weeks. We will have some players back.”
“We just go on. We didn’t lose that game so that is a positive, a big positive.”
In the absence of Flores, acting captain Lucas Pantelis took on the role of playmaker handing Sydney FC recruit Iain Ramsay his run-on debut playing out wide on the left.
Coolen acknowledged the reshuffle wasn’t ideal as the Reds have trained strongly over the last two weeks with the Argentine in his favoured number 10 position during practice matches and training drills.
“It’s not good if you train the last two weeks in the kind of system and he’s playing in one of the important positions, the number 10,” he said.
“We couldn’t take the risk to let him play. We have a few players who can play there, Lucas was playing there. We had some moments where there were three-on-three in the midfield and they’re the moments where we have to do better.”
“Lucas can play there and Ramsay came in. He’s a young kid and did very well and worked real hard. Defensively he was terrific and the moments that he got the ball he brought some speed into the game.”
Coolen said the Reds would need to do better in the front third.
He said for all of United’s possession, the Reds failed to create enough genuine goal scoring chances.
“I think it was a good open game, not so many goal scoring opportunities from either side,” he said.
“I think we had a little bit more of the pole position but we have to create more possibilities to score. We tried to play with fast wingers. The boys played well as a team and worked hard and I saw a few good things.”
