Adelaide United have had a cracking start to the season by anyone’s standards, but after losing their first two games in consecutive weeks coach Rini Coolen says his side have been brought back to earth.
The Reds went down 2-1 to Melbourne last weekend at Etihad Stadium and then were crushed 4-0 by a 10-men Brisbane Roar outfit in a top of the table clash at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.
Adelaide were sticking with Brisbane in the early going and at half-time were right in the contest trailing just 1-0, but when the hosts lost Reinaldo to a second yellow card they shifted up a gear and poured in three quick goals despite being a man short.
Struggling to cope with the loss of leading goal-scorer Matt Leckie and the absence of play-maker Marco Flores, Coolen said his side simply didn’t have the man-power to match it with the Roar on the night.
“If you see the whole game they were too good for us today,” he said.
“They play a very high level, and they’re definitely the best team we’ve played against, definitely the best team in the league.”
“If we want to beat them then our full squad has to be available for this team … it’s all about them and to be honest it was really good football. It was too much for us today and I think 4-0 was a fair result.”
“Of course (it’s hard) if you lose those kind of players (Leckie and Flores), they’re key players in our system.”
For Coolen, the next challenge is dealing with a short turnaround before facing the Perth Glory at home on Wednesday night.
Flores should be back on deck to add a little direction and creativity to the attack and Adelaide will be motivated to squash any suggestion of a mid-year plateau.
“It’s our job to bring our players back, and we are back on earth at the moment,” Coolen said.
“We have to work hard. We believe in our players and we have to get them ready for the next game, which is at home, and we have to play better than we did today, which we did before, and get the three points.”
Certainly the Reds coach can be confident that after a winning start to the year his players will be eager to address the two-game ‘skid’.
Speaking at the post-match press conference, United skipper Lucas Pantelis made clear the attitude he was expecting from his team heading into their mid-week game against Perth.
“That’s the only positive to come out of tonight, the fact that we don’t have to wait till next weekend, we can wait till Wednesday and hopefully make up for it,” said Pantelis.
“We’re still upbeat, even though we’re very disappointed and very, very upset. No player wants to go through what we went through tonight.”
“Like Rini said, they were too good tonight, we have to cop it on the chin, keep our heads up, go back Wednesday night against Perth and hopefully we can do the job there.”
