Adelaide United says it’s blown a favourable opening to the season and admits there’s more pressure now to win games on the road.
The Reds knew the importance of a good start to the season given five of their first seven games were at Hindmarsh Stadium. But injuries, wasted opportunities in attack and quality opponents have made life difficult.
United has scored just six goals in its seven games – with half of those coming in its 3-3 draw with North Queensland Fury – and collected just eight points so far this year.
Coach Aurelio Vidmar said his side was ‘huffing and puffing’ but needed to improve its finishing if it is to build some momentum this season. Four of the Reds’ next six matches are away.
“It gets to the point now where every game is extremely important, I know it’s still early in the season but we need to get as many points on the board as possible,” he said.
“That final pass in the front third (has to improve) … (there’s) a lot of action in the box but the ball at the moment is not falling for us.”
“We need to really sharpen up in that area but it’s not easy … so we’ve just got to keep plugging away.”
Captain Travis Dodd said his side missed a ‘perfect’ opportunity to beat Melbourne Victory on Friday night given Danny Allsopp has left the side and Kevin Muscat lacked match fitness after five weeks on the sidelines with a hamstring injury.
“I’m gutted with the result, two wins out of five we’ve had at home this year is not good enough, we need to get our act together quick smart because it’s getting to that stage where every game is becoming a crunch game for us,” Dodd said.
“The goals will come but we just need someone to get the first one. But we need to work hard on other things in our game, keeping possession is a big one for us, it has been all year.”
There were few positives to come from Adelaide’s loss to Melbourne but Vidmar said Kristian Sarkies played well in his first 67 minutes for the season while the rest of the team got through the clash relatively unscathed.
Brazilian Alemao, who had his nose broken in Round 6, was on the bench but wasn’t used.
“He was a bit dicey about his nose so we could’ve probably played him but I probably thought this game here, with it being really, really aggressive … in my opinion it was best he sat out,” Vidmar said.
