Perth Glory interim coach Ian Ferguson has savagely criticised his player’s effort in their 2-0 loss to Sydney FC on Saturday night.
The second-last Glory appeared to be going through the motions for much of the first hour as Sydney went two goals ahead through Nick Carle and Bruno Cazarine.
And, while the hosts showed some spark in the final 30 minutes when they finally started penetrating the opposition defence, they couldn’t convert their chances, with Mile Sterjovski’s miss from a one-on-one with Sydney stopper Ivan Necevski emblematic of a terrible night at the office.
Ferguson acknowledged there may have been mitigating circumstances, like the stifling heat and humidity and the fact the Glory have started rebuilding for next season, a process that’s seen several players already leave.
But regardless of these, the coach was in no mood to take prisoners.
“I think since I’ve been here that’s probably the worst I’ve seen us play in a long time,” Ferguson declared.
“Look the club’s in transition, you know we’re obviously trying to rebuild for next year and having a look at a few things and players being allowed to go.”
“We’ve probably dismantled again what we built up 12 weeks ago and we’re back to where we were.”
“Basically, we’ve got two games to go and the sooner the season finishes the better for everyone.”
“We’re not going to achieve anything are we, we’re going to say second bottom now ’cause that’s them (Sydney) six points ahead of us. We can’t even catch Sydney.”
“(So) we’ve got to think about a bit of pride a bit of pride for this club and a bit of pride for ourselves and hopefully try and get the last couple of victories in.”
Ferguson said his side didn’t seem to cope with the extreme heat and unusual humidity in Perth on Saturday night, the result of Cyclone Bianca influencing the weather.
“It looked that way,” Ferguson said when asked if his side couldn’t adjust to the conditions.
“But it’s the same for them as well, they were far brighter, far sharper, their movement was good and caused us problems.”
“As I said, it’s been a long old season for everybody and I don’t know if that’s took its toll, you know the swapping and changing and personnel coming and going.”
“You know I thought tonight, I really did, I thought tonight we could have run out there and won the game but Sydney again were all over us.”
