Perth Glory coach Ian Ferguson has questioned the consistency of his team on the back of their 1-1 draw with Wellington Phoenix on Saturday night.
Perth Glory coach Ian Ferguson has questioned the consistency of his team on the back of their 1-1 draw with Wellington Phoenix at nib stadium on Saturday night.
The Glory looked the better of the two teams for the majority of the 90 minutes, had the better of the chances and recorded 13 shots to Wellington’s six, but could not clinch the three points.
Ferguson said Perth should have been smart enough to close out the game after Shane Smeltz’s 62nd-minute strike gave them the lead.
“Getting ourselves into the lead and then giving away a silly goal in the manner that we did like that was pretty poor, so disappointed to be honest,” he said.
“We weren’t consistent enough, there was times when we played some decent football and then there was times we spoke about at half-time, the decision-making again under no pressure and the turnover of the ball isn’t good enough.
“We seem to put ourselves in a lot of trouble rather than the other team hurting us, we seem to be giving the ball away in certain areas and the opposition pounce on it.”
Wellington drew level just 11 minutes after Perth took the lead through Jeremy Brockie when the Phoenix talisman capitalised on a turnover, took on Steve Pantelidis and delivered a slick finish.
Smeltz scored his first goal of the A-League season in his third match and it came courtesy of a Pantelidis long ball, which Ferguson said he wanted to see more of with the two strikers.
“I just feel we don’t get enough service to (Smeltz and Billy Mehmet) quickly enough,” he said.
“When we’ve got these two players in the team at the same time we need to get things sometimes a little bit more direct rather than playing the nice football.
“Sometimes we’ve got to be a little bit more direct like Wellington were tonight, they caused us a lot of problems with that.”
Perth will now face consecutive games at AAMI Park against the two Melbourne teams, but will not stay in Victoria for the week in between, choosing instead to return home.
They will face the first of those matches against the Victory without captain Jacob Burns after he received his fifth yellow card in five games.
“That’s the just the way the boy is, I say it all the time, he plays with his heart on his sleeve,” Ferguson said about his skipper.
“But again he’s got to be a little bit smarter knowing he’s on four bookings and the next one could put him out, so yeah, look we’ll have a little chat about that.”
Perth will also miss Scott Jamieson and Michael Thwaite to international duties, but the Victory are in the same boat and will be without Archie Thompson and Mark Milligan.
