‘Extremely poor’ – Djite dives in to stop Adelaide’s free fall

Bruce Djite has given a damning verdict of Adelaide United’s recent slump and the Reds’ Director of Football is leading an inquest to save their season.

Head coach Gertjan Verbeek’s side have shipped 15 goals in their past four defeats, a run of performances Djite slammed as ‘extremely poor’ and he insisted ‘soul searching’ is required during their bye week, following a 3-0 home loss against the lowly Newcastle Jets.

The former Socceroos international, who lifted the Premiership-Championship double with Adelaide in 2015/16, is personally holding face-to-face talks with the Reds’ players this week in an attempt to solve their miserable form.

The South Australians have only spent one week outside of the top six since Round 5 and they were in fourth place after Round 19 – but have now fallen out of the Finals Series spots after losing five of their last six.

Only the rock bottom Central Coast Mariners have lost more games and conceded more goals than the Reds, who have sensationally not drawn a single one of their 21 matches under Verbeek’s cavalier approach.

“Exceptionally disappointing last five or weeks,” Djite told adelaideunited.com.au

“We’re losing games and losing quite badly.

“We’ve got a bye this week and there’s going to be a lot of soul searching.

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“There’s individual player meetings with myself this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’m expecting to get some good feedback from the players then.

“Positive, negative, and whatever is in between. I’m speaking to the coaches very regularly as well.

“There’s still five games to go, still an opportunity to make the finals.

“I don’t say it’s going to be easy, it’s definitely possible.

“We’ve seen this team do exceptionally well in parts this season, and also do exceptionally poorly in parts this season.

“It’s important we get back to what we were doing early in the season and winning some games.

“Hopefully if we work all together, we can see that into the future.

“If I reflect on what has been recent – [Sunday’s] performance, the performances preceding that – they have been extremely poor and the fans let that know after the game.”

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