Sydney FC head coach Vitezslav Lavicka says the Sky Blues can return to the heights of last season, but not until they have key strikers Alex Brosque and Mark Bridge back on the pitch.
The defending champions are yet to get a win. They drew with Melbourne Victory, they lost to the NQ Fury and now they’ve been comprehensively outplayed by a slick Brisbane Roar outfit.
Bridge and Brosque linked well for the Sky Blues in the first week of competition, but with the pair sidelined to a hamstring and ankle injury respectively, Sydney looked completely without options and were perhaps lucky to concede only one goal to the Roar.
“We had a difficult situation before the game, but we didn’t complain – that’s football, it’s sometimes like this,” Lavicka said.
“We played a deep defensive block and tried to play some quick counters on some pieces.”
“It was very hard.”
“I believe that (Brosque and Bridge) will be available, or a minimum of one of them will be available and ready to play the next game, but it’s hard to say now.”
“The medical staff and players are doing the maximise to be ready for next week, but we’ll see,” he said.
Undermanned as they were, Lavicka insisted the credit belonged to the home side for their aggressive approach to the game and fluid build-up in attack
“I have to say their whole team played very well tonight, especially in attack, they moved the ball quickly and put us under pressure.”
“Full credit to the home team, they deserved it, because they played very attacking football and created a lot of chances,” he said.
Complacency was ruled out by Lavicka who says the Sydney side were taking the loss hard and their was a desire in the team to continue to work towards defending the trophy..
While Sydney sit anchored on one competition point from three starts, Lavicka knows the race is long in a thirty-round regular season, and while his side haven’t had the start they were looking for, the early depth test may pay dividends towards the back-end of the competition.
“We are disappointed. Players in the changing room are disappointed. All of us are disappointed, but we’ll work hard at training and stay together.”
“Of course it’s disappointing. We expected a better start. We’ve had a slow start, but the season is only played three rounds yet.”
“All of us and me personally believe that we have improved and we have a deeper squad and we’ll play better next time,” he said.
As for the standards in the Hyundai A-League, the Sydney FC coach says the competition has raised to another level in 2010/11 and a title this time round will have to come in spite of tougher opposition across the board.
