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Newcastle coach Branko Culina wasn’t overly disappointed with Sunday’s loss to Perth, but is keen to see his team respond against Gold Coast and his son Jason.
The Jets came to Perth with a win and draw to begin the A-League season, but didn’t create many chances to lose 2-0 to the Glory.
Wayne Srhoj scored 23 minutes into the game and a tremendous strike from Adriano Pellegrino in the 71st minute secured the Glory’s first win of the season.
Culina would like to see his team keep hold of the ball a little better and was disappointed to lose Ben Kantarovski to an ankle injury, but wasn’t too unhappy overall.
“It was always going to be a danger game knowing that Perth lost its first two games and were playing their first game at home.
“We probably helped them a little by not keeping the ball as well as we would have liked, but it’s a tough trip,” Culina said.
“I’m not all that disappointed because we are still a work in progress. We have a number of players who weren’t ready, including Nikolai (Topor-Stanley), but he put his hand up to play because we needed him and then we have a number of other players still to come back.”
Culina didn’t want to buy into talk of coaching against his son next Sunday when the Jets host the undefeated Gold Coast, but he is looking forward to it.
“I don’t like talking about my son, his football talks for itself. For us it’s not about whether we play Gold Coast and Jason Culina, it’s about how we rebound from a loss.
“That’s what I will be looking at during the week and there’s no greater task than Gold Coast,” he said.
“They have set the benchmark, are the best team in the competition by a country mile and it’s great for Australian football to have a club playing great football and we should all strive to what Gold Coast has been in the first three rounds.”
Perth Glory was impressive winning their first game at home for the season after losses away to Adelaide and Wellington, and coach Dave Mitchell was happy to have things started ahead of hosting Melbourne Victory on Friday night.
“Defensively we were very strong and we probably lacked a few combinations still, but the second goal was a great move. I’ve been telling (Adriano) Pellegrino to get in the box to score goals and thankfully he listened and did it,” Mitchell said.
“This kick-started our season now and it’s a bit of a relief for all the players. It took a lot of hard work because the pitch was very soft and heavy with the amount of rain we had, but we are now looking forward to a tough game against Melbourne.
“Melbourne are quite formidable, have two great strikers and tend to sit back to hit you back on the counter. They play a lot of diagonal balls in behind and that’s what we have to be careful of. We need to be solid at the back not to concede.”
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