Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar believes his side deserved all three points in the dramatic 1-1 Hyundai A-League draw with Newcastle at EnergyAustralia Stadium on Sunday night.
The Reds controlled play in the first half and squandered a number of promising chances in the second half before conceding a goal to Matt Thompson in the 56th minute.
The Reds launched a number of attacks on the Newcastle goal towards the end of the match and were denied by great goalkeeping from Jets custodian Ante Covic until the fourth minute of extra time when defender Sasa Ognenovski head home a free kick to snatch a late draw.
“We did enough to get more than that,” Vidmar said after the match. “I thought the number of chances that we had we should have had the three points.”
“In terms of general play, and I don’t know what the stats are, but we pretty much had control of the majority of the game and just the front third really let us down today.”
“We still had a fair bit of the ball in the second half and in the early period of the second half we had three pretty good chances in the space of a few minutes but the longer the game goes on if you don’t take your chances the harder it gets.”
Vidmar also denied his side was jaded after its taxing Asian Champions League campaign and insisted the team that took the park on Sunday proved it was fit and fresh by grabbing the equaliser in the final moments of extra time.
“We are certainly not jaded,” he said. “Just our front third lack a bit of cohesion and we will have to work on that.”
“In terms of the players going out there and in terms of the endeavour it was certainly there. We ran out the 90 minutes.”
“We have worked them (the players) hard over the last couple of weeks but we have also given them rest because we know we needed to give them a rest.”
“You can call it a hangover or call it what you like whatever but I don’t think it is anything like that.”
