Disappointed Melbourne Victory coach Mehmet Durakovic was left fuming over simple mistakes and a missed penalty opportunity in Saturday night’s 3-1 loss to the Jets in Newcastle.
Disappointed Melbourne Victory coach Mehmet Durakovic was left fuming over simple mistakes and a missed penalty opportunity in Saturday night’s 3-1 loss to the Jets in Newcastle.
The Victory started the game well, controlling play and profiting from their pressure with a 1-0 lead in the 20th minute courtesy of a curling strike from Carlos Hernandez.
But the Victory were their own worst enemy at times. They let the Jets back into the match in the 27th minute when Marco Rojas wrestled down Ryan Griffiths inside the box and the left-footed striker converted from the spot to make it 1-1.
Poor marking allowed the Jets to hit the lead through a Labinot Haliti header directly after half-time and Griffiths sealed the win with his second goal of the night in the shadow of full-time after a mistake from Melbourne midfielder Isaka Cernak.
But the biggest talking point of the night was an unanswered call for a penalty when it appeared Jets defender Nikolai Topor-Stanley had brought down Victory striker Archie Thompson in the box in the 79th minute.
“Disappointing,” said Durakovic after the game. “Disappointed because I thought we could have had a penalty. We all make mistakes but I thought the referee got it wrong. We should have had a penalty and the guy could have got sent off.”
“We started off really well and played the game we wanted with a high tempo, high intensity and scored a wonderful goal.”
“We then made a mistake for the penalty and then we made a couple of more mistakes in the second half and it cost us the game.”
Durakovic said the goal directly after half-time was a massive body blow for his side after they had started the game so brightly, but he was pleased with the way his side fought until the final whistle.
“To cop a goal right after second half hurt us – we didn’t pick up at the back post and Halitit come in and scored. But full credit to most of the players, they battled really well.”
“We had to get going again and in patches we played some really good football and the short sharp passing that we try to play we did that for a period of time and we were unlucky not to get the penalty.”
Durakovic agreed that the loss will increase the media attention surrounding his job, but he said his main concern was getting the maximum result from their next three games at home.
“These games are all about winning and we need to win games but the way we started I was very happy about that,” he said.
“We talked all week about how hard Newcastle is to be at home and we want to play our style of game, and we did. But a couple of mistakes cost us the game.”
“We wanted to keep that consistency going and we started off really well and we made a couple of mistakes and it cost us the game. Newcastle are very hard to beat at home.”
“We have three of our next four in Melbourne and we will work as hard we can to keep the intensity going and get as many points as we can.”
