Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi is still at a loss to explain his team’s poor away form after suffering a 2-0 loss to top-six rivals the Newcastle Jets on Friday night.
Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi is still at a loss to explain his team’s poor away form after suffering a 2-0 loss to top-six rivals the Newcastle Jets on Friday night.
The Heart have collected just one point outside of Melbourne all season and that trend continued in Newcastle as they were outplayed by a resurgent Jets outfit that featured goals to marquee man Emile Heskey in the 10th minute and Ryan Griffiths 10 minutes from full-time.
“We shouldn’t really worry whether we are playing at home or away,” Aloisi said after the loss to the Jets.
“We try to play the same way, the same football. It is not like we are defending too deep.
“We try to dictate the game by keeping possession and creating openings the same as we do at home. And then when we lose the ball we try to keep compact and not go too deep to invite pressure. So it shouldn’t be much different.
“It is a bit concerning that we are not winning away from home because I think we are good enough to pick up a lot more points away from home.
“It was disappointing to get another loss. It is something that we have to put right.”
Aloisi still took some positives away from the match. Striker Eli Babalj looked dangerous going forward and hit the post in the 25th minute, while Richard Garcia and David Williams proved to be a threat on the wings but were unable to convert their industrious work.
“You can take a bit away from the match especially the period when we got on top,” Aloisi said.
“It is never easy to create that many chances away from home and we created three or four good openings, so that is a positive.
“You don’t write it off. We will analyse the game, see where we went wrong and what we can improve on and do better.
“After a bad start in the first 10 minutes I thought we were playing quite well.
“We started to create good chances and when you are on top like that and you get those chances it is important that you put them away.”
Aloisi also deemed Babalj’s near miss midway through the first half as a pivotal moment in the game.
“I think that is something that would have changed the game tonight,” he said.
“I thought that during that 25-30 minute spell where we got on top Eli hit the post and we had a couple of good openings. If we scored there it could have been a bit different.
“We started well again in the second half but then we fell away and we didn’t really cause them many problems.
“I thought in the first half we tried to play through them in the midfield but they kept it pretty compact but then we were able to switch the ball and hit our wingers pretty easily and that is where we were creating problems and a few times straight balls down the middle to Eli because they were playing a pretty high line.
“We stopped doing that in the second half. The game didn’t flow that well in the second half, there were a lot of stoppages.”
The Heart boss said that they would not dwell on the loss and will quickly switch their attention to next week’s crucial clash against top-six rivals Sydney FC.
“We have an important match coming up against Sydney FC, the season is still alive for us as it is for most teams around that area so top six is not out of the question,” he said.
“We will keep on working hard on the training pitch and keep on improving and make sure we get a good result against Sydney.”