Perth veteran Jamie Harnwell has called on his team-mates to take responsibility for the Glory’s poor run of form which has seen them concede eight goals in two weeks in away defeats to the Central Coast and Melbourne.
Harnwell said it was unfair to attribute blame of the defeats on coach David Mitchell, who he said has the full support of the team, and that the players had not gone out and done the job required of them in the 4-0 defeat to the Victory.
“He’s the coach. I’ve given 100 per cent regardless of who the coach is. I’ll continue that,” he said. “Mitch has assembled a good squad on paper. For whatever reasons, we’re not doing it and it’s the player’s responsibility.”
“He went out with a good formation and a good way of approaching the match tonight with the confidence of getting something out of it. Out on the pitch we didn’t deliver, how that can be blamed on Mitch, I can’t see how it can.”
However, Harnwell said the club’s form slump is certainly nothing to do with a lack of passion and he would not tolerate any sense of that in the dressing room.
“Everyone is giving 100 per cent out there, whether they’ve shown passion, everyone shows it in different ways,” he said.
“I don’t think we played well and there was a lot of mistakes made, and we’ve got to look at that. But if I thought anyone out there wasn’t giving 100 per cent, I’d knock their bloody block off. I wouldn’t accept that, I know Mitch wouldn’t either.”
Mitchell agreed that the players needed to take some responsibility, but that he needed to absorb some of the blame as well.
“I’m leading the team at the moment so the responsibility does stop with me. As a club, as a team, we all take responsibility. The buck stops with me. But there are players collectively who have to do better and come up with a formula where we can win a couple of games,” he said.
Mitchell said the players’ confidence was at a low ebb and he would use the week off for the FIFA break to address that.
“I think when your confidence is down, the individual errors seem to happen. Some of them are not good enough, and sometimes the opposition make the most of that,” he said.
But he still has faith in his players and believes the match against Sydney after the break could be a chance to restore the team’s confidence.
“I think if we got our best players on the park I think we can compete and I think particularly at home, maybe not so much away, we are set up to be competitive,” he said.
