Adelaide United boss Gertjan Verbeek launches scathing attack on his side after poor performance in Perth
Adelaide United crashed to a fourth-consecutive loss against Perth Glory on Saturday night and coach Gertjan Verbeek didn’t hold back when assessing his team’s poor performance.
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Adelaide United boss Gertjan Verbeek says he doesn’t know how to arrest the Reds’ losing streak and questioned whether members of his squad are up to A-League standard or indeed have a future at the club.
Verbeek was scathing after Adelaide crashed to a 0-3 loss against Perth Glory at HBF Park on Saturday night.
The Dutchman said all three goals came from errors as Adelaide sunk outside the top six – six games after the Reds were touted as title material when they battered Melbourne Victory 3-1 at home.
“At this moment, I don’t know how,” Verbeek responded when asked how the Reds can halt the slide.
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Joel Chianese opened Glory’s account before Bruno Fornaroli and Chris Ikonomidis scored on either side of the break.
Verbeek hooked left back Ryan Kitto for the second time this season at the break, and was far from impressed at Kitto’s defending for Chianese’s opener.
Kitto had signed a two-year extension at the end of October.
“We had to make a change in the team because James Troisi (hamstring) was injured but still (Ryan) Kitto has played for a long time from the beginning (of the season) at left back,’’ Verbeek said.
“So he had to know what to do, we trained on Thursday, the tactic was OK, the plan was OK and I think the planned worked - also, we didn’t give much away (early).
“But the things we gave away were 100 per cent chances for them.
“If you see how easy the striker (Chianese) is turning away from Kitto, that’s not defending - we’re talking about A-League, not the youth team or the NPL.
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“You can’t make those mistakes in the A-League against a good opponent; they score easily.
“When mistakes are personal and players make them too often, they show me they’re not good enough for the A-League, so that’s why I changed Kitto.
“It’s hard for him, but he’s not making one mistake … after that (Chianese goal) he made many mistakes.
“Then you get changed and for next season we have to see if he can make it up, but otherwise … that’s for next season.
“This season we have to do it with this squad and until now I’m not happy with what I’m seeing.”
Adelaide also had two penalty shouts fall on deaf ears in the first half when the ball hit the arms of Fornaroli and Ivan Franjic inside the box.
“All the three goals were personal mistakes, and not why the opponent was so good playing football, but they’re very effective and also have quality,” Verbeek said.
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“It’s not isolated, it’s already the fourth game we lose (on the trot), we don’t learn from the former games we played and, yeah, that’s something we have to work on.”
“The problems are we are too easy giving chances away and they do have the quality to use those chances and we don’t.
“We had also our chances, but we didn’t score and they were very effective just before the drinks break and just before half-time, they created good moments.
“We started well and we had some possibilities (to score), we had a lot of the ball, but I think they wanted that - that we have the ball.
“They (Glory) wanted to play from transition (counter attacking) and they did it very well and they got a little bit of help from our team in defending.”
Verbeek is hoping to have Troisi back against Victory at Hindmarsh on Friday, adding Mirko Boland earning his first official minutes for the youth team yesterday (Sunday) after knee surgery is an added bonus.