Newcastle coach Phil Stubbins believes his side’s last-gasp defensive brain-snaps have masked an otherwise encouraging start to their A-League season.
The cash-strapped Jets were widely tipped to struggle this year but were two minutes away from beating Melbourne City last week only for Spanish superstar David Villa to pounce for an equaliser at AAMI Park.
That 1-1 draw earned the Jets their first points of the season after going down 1-0 to the Central Coast Mariners in round one – a game they largely dominated but lost after an injury-time winner.
Stubbins and his side head to New Zealand to take on Wellington this Sunday and after returning from across the Tasman on Monday will fly over the Nullarbor next Friday to face Perth.
It will be the fourth successive away game for the Jets, who are unable to use Hunter Stadium until round five due to the re-laying of the playing surface.
Despite their tough start to the year, Stubbins has seen enough evidence to suggest his side can be a top-six side if they can start playing for the full 90 minutes.
“If you take our clear-cut chances and the game being cut off at 88 minutes we’d be sitting at the top of the table,” Stubbins told AAP.
“But the game goes to the final whistle and so far we’ve not dealt with that as well as we could have done and it’s come back to bite us on the bum a little bit.
“But in terms of the group and resolve they’ve shown it’s been very good. There was a lot of conjecture about the team prior to the season that we were going to be underdogs in every game.
“But we’ve proved that wrong already. As the season progresses you’ll see the Jets move on to bigger and better things and pick up a few scalps along the way.”
Stubbins is set to recall Ben Kantarovski this weekend after the midfielder’s recovery from off-season knee surgery and is considering promoting Young Socceroos midfielder Andrew Hoole from the bench to add some extra attacking threat.
“We need to score goals, it’s something we’re focusing on,” he said.
“We’ve got Joel Griffiths, Edson Montano and Jeronimo and although we’ve switched them around a bit we’ve only scored once.
“Andrew Hoole is champing at the bit and hitting the back of the net in training regularly so he could start.”
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