Brisbane Roar coach Ange Postecoglou was far from satisfied on Sunday night even though he’d just watched his men stretch their unbeaten run to 10 matches with a 2-1 win over Melbourne Heart at AAMI Park.
Postecoglou readily conceded that the Roar, whose only defeat of the campaign so far came to Melbourne Victory at the same venue in mid-September, should probably have been further than 1-0 down at the break.
But having absorbed plenty of pressure as they managed just 44 percent of possession and ridden their luck at times the visitors were a different team after the break and were rewarded with goals to Kosta Barbarouses and Jean Carlos Solorzano.
The result may have stretched Brisbane’s lead at the top of the table to four points from Adelaide United but Postecoglou wasn’t getting carried away by the performance.
“We were poor first half and to be honest we were lucky to still be in it, I think Melbourne Heart were real good in the first half and had some good chances and if they got that second goal it would’ve made things really difficult for us,” Postecoglou said.
“The second half was better by us for sure, it was a good reaction by the boys, we played more to our style, we were a lot more aggressive defensively and when we had the ball.”
“But it was a really flat first half and it was disappointing and a good result but we don’t really want to be playing that way too many times, I think we’ll pay a price at some stage.”
Having noted that he’d taken the performance as a warning sign of his team perhaps not being as sharp as it could be, Postecoglou added that the efforts so far this season of his men have vindicated what he has been saying since before the campaign began.
“I said it consistently from the start of the year that I knew we had goals in us, we have players that can score, but when players score themselves it gives them that added belief,” he added.
“I think we believe we can score there’s no doubt about that and I guess that puts pressure on oppositions too because even if we’re down 1-0 I think opposition teams will still fear us because we know we can score goals.”
“We try and play football a certain way and that includes in the front third, we don’t just want to bomb balls into the box when we get into good areas, we still want to pass the ball around as much as we can and we have players that can do that.”
“I thought particularly Kosta’s goal was another quality goal, we’re scoring some really nice goals, they’re not accidents.”
“That gives players the belief that what we’re doing works because sometimes you can score goals by sheer accident but I’d say 90 percent of our goals are by design which as a coach it gives you some heart to keep working on it and I think it gives the players belief in what we’re doing.”
Postecoglou is also hoping that with this game kick-starting another testing run of games with mid-week matches and then games on the weekend as well in the next fortnight that his team finishes off the stretch strongly as it has previously this season.
In mid-October they drew with the Jets at home and then within a week had beaten both the Mariners and Victory at Suncorp and after drawing with Sydney FC at the SFS on October 30 they then also downed the Phoenix away and Adelaide United at home.
“We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing,” he said ahead of Wednesday’s trip to Newcastle, a home game back at Suncorp against the Fury next Saturday, and games against the Glory (Suncorp) on November 24 and the Mariners (Bluetongue Stadium) on November 28.
“The players that are available are all feeling pretty good, they’re backing up.”
“The last two triple headers we’ve had we’ve finished the week strongly.”
“If anything we’ve been starting the week slowly in the previous two triple headers we had we started off with a draw in both … and again we started slowly today.”
“It’s not affecting the players, it’s going to be a tough two weeks for sure but at the moment the players are thriving on the workload and we hope that continues.”
