An upbeat Frank Farina still believes his Queensland team are well in the title hunt despite a 2-1 defeat to Melbourne on Friday night, despite admitting that his side had made too many errors.
Melbourne scored two goals in 12 minutes early in the second half to secure the win. The Victory are now three points clear of the fourth-placed Roar, who suffered their first loss in six games. But Farina said the battle for the top four is still a long way from being settled.
“We’re still in mix, I don’t that the four will be decided for a while yet, depending on results, of course,” Farina said.
The coach pointed to two errors from experienced players as the cause of the defeat, and said that if his team was going to be competitive in the finals, they needed to make fewer errors.
“The two goals, I thought were schoolboy errors for us which we haven’t been doing a lot of lately,” he said. “We got back in the game, rode our luck a little bit. We just couldn’t get that bit of luck at the end to get the equaliser.”
“I thought the first half was pretty even, we had two good chances and we didn’t even hit the target, which is disappointing. After the two goals they dominated, before that. I thought it was an arm wrestle.”
Farina was happy to point the finger at the two players he held responsible. Matt McKay was dispossessed by Tom Pondeljak in the lead up to the first goal, while Liam Reddy’s decision to remain on his line from a Melbourne set-piece was wrong according to the Roar coach.
“They came from the older guys, Matt McKay lost position in the heart of midfield, which is one the things we stressed at half time, not to turn over possession in the park, because the counter attack is so quick. We had bodies forward and he gave away possession and they broke quickly and we were outnumbered,” he said.
“The second one, Liam Reddy, he should have come. It was in the six-yard box it wasn’t a driver in cross it was just a dink, and Vargas has scored from close range. That’s a fundamental error from Liam.”
Farina said Melbourne was particularly good on seizing on opposition errors and that his team had learned a valuable lesson.
“They break very quickly, it’s been their strength for a number of years. We’ve made mistakes tonight and they were very costly, sometimes you make mistakes and get away with them, tonight was not one of those nights,” he said.
