Newcastle Jets coach Branko Culina has praised the patience his side showed in scoring two late goals to register their third win in as many games with a 2-0 win over Gold Coast United on Wednesday night.
The Jets dominated the first half creating a number of clear chances to grab the opening goal but a combination of good goalkeeping from Glen Moss and rushed shooting from the Jets kept the teams locked 0-0 at half-time.
But Newcastle kept up the pressure in the second half and were rewarded with goals to Ali Abbas in the 77th minute and ‘super sub’ Sasho Petrovski in the 81st minute to maintain their recent good form despite finishing the game without skipper Ljubo Milicevic, who was dismissed in the 78th minute after collecting his second yellow card.
“You always have that doubt, ‘did we blow our chances’. But I always thought we were playing well enough and creating enough that we were capable enough of creating again and we did,” Culina said after the match.
“The key thing for us was to be patient and to play good football as we did in the first half.”
“We talked about it at half-time and said ‘just be patient’ we are playing well enough and we used the analogy of last week of having a player sent off and then scoring to goals in 10 minutes and went on and won.”
“This week we said maybe we can score them in the last 10 minutes and win. Credit to the players – they were superb.”
Culina reserved special praise for Abbas and revealed the talented Iraqi had passed up an opportunity to play for his country in preference for his club.
“We had a bit of a chat about that today actually, I said to him (Abbas) you are doing well, particularly in the new role you are playing but we need goals. And he delivered which is a credit to him.” Culina said.
“The other thing that was pleasing was that he had a call-up from Iraq to play Saturday against Syria and he left it up to us, which is a difficult one for us and difficult one for him.”
“Obviously he wants to play for his country but he didn’t want to do anything wrong by his club either. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for us we decided to decline their invitation and it just goes to show how caring he is.”
Culina also said he was pleased his side had equaled their all-time record of seven consecutive games without a loss.
“I only found out by reading one of the magazines that in all the time that Newcastle has been in the A-League that their best run of game snot being beaten was only seven games and that was in the year they won the championship,” he said it.
“Records are there to be broken and someone was going to do it sooner or later, I am glad we did it.”
Meanwhile, Gold Coast coach Miron Bleiberg was gracious in defeat admitting his side was outplayed and said some of his players didn’t follow the game plan.
“We didn’t play good enough and we deserved to lose and I don’t like to use it but in the first half one or two players didn’t follow the instructions,” Bleiberg said.
“It is a team game and when one or two players doesn’t follow instructions it is like a chain reaction, like dominos and the whole thing collapses.”
“It is not that they didn’t follow instructions because of a lack of discipline it is because of the players who want it too much and they are running around like a chook with no head everywhere instead of keeping shape.”
“I think in the second half, after I gave them a spray in the dressing room that we did well. It was almost a stalemate. Newcastle stopped controlling the game and it was quite even despite two mistakes that they converted very well, for two good goals, but there was not much between the two teams.”
“But I think the crowd was carrying them and they kept going and going and going and then even with 10 men you didn’t feel as if it was 10 men because they kept going.”
