Adelaide United coach John Kosmina highlighted silly mistakes as the reason for the Reds’ 2-1 loss at the hands of the Central Coast Mariners on Saturday evening in Gosford.
The result saw the Mariners leapfrog Adelaide into top spot on the Hyundai A-League ladder by one point.
Having made four changes to his match-day squad, Kosmina conceded the result, whilst not ideal, still showed promising signs.
“All in all some of the football wasn’t too bad,” Kosmina said.
“But we made some silly mistakes and let the Mariners get the three points. It’s probably one we will look at and say it got away.
“We had good opportunities to take control of the game and we did at stages, but we didn’t keep control of it.
“We got caught on a counterattack (for Nick Montgomery’s winner). We were in a good attacking situation and we got done on the break, we still had enough bodies there to keep the ball.”
The 56-year-old praised the performance of young goalkeeper Paul Izzo who replaced Eugene Galekovic (Qantas Socceroos duty) between the sticks.
“It was a big step up for him. He was good early on,” Kosmina said of Izzo.
“He was aggressive. He attacked the ball in the air. He dropped it but he came down on top of somebody and he recovered. His kicking was up and down but for a 17-year-old kid I think he did a great job.”
Kosmina did concede his side lacked some speed in playing out from defence.
“Today we could have played out a bit more urgently I think,” Kosmina said.
“We even set up a play out from goal kicks like we do most weeks.
“I think maybe the guys were a bit concerned about getting caught in possession and then the young bloke (Izzo) having to maybe deal with a difficult situation so we took the safe route and we went long.”
Reflecting on the first nine rounds the former Sydney FC boss commented: “We played some decent stuff, we chopped and changed a bit. We have experimented at times and we have still got some good outcomes so I can’t complain.
“It’s always nice to be on top, that’s nine games and we have been on top for seven weeks so we can’t complain too much.
“Now we are back to being underdogs.”