Adelaide United defender, Dylan McGowan, believes depth played a crucial role in Friday Night’s defeat against Melbourne City, but said the Reds will be prepared and ready to bounce back against the Wellington Phoenix this weekend.
With Adelaide United missing several key players on Friday Night, central defender Dylan McGowan believes although missing key players the second half performance wasn’t acceptable.
“You are going to miss your best players and we certainly did on Friday Night, so it’s something that we have got to learn to maybe have some more depth in certain areas within the squad.”
“When you are missing a key defender and a couple key midfielders we are always going to struggle but we should have done better on Friday Night.”
“We were missing key players/ big characters and these sorts of things don’t help, but we had a good enough team out on the pitch to keep hold of a one goal lead and at the end of the day we should have done better.”
And when asked about the long run into the finals and the fact that Adelaide United could have taken top spot McGowan stated we will work hard and make sure we get things right before this weekend’s clash against Wellington Phoenix.
“It’s definitely disappointing, you don’t get a chance to go top spot with eight or so games left very often, so we will hopefully work hard this week on the track and make things right and hopefully take three points against Wellington”.
“All we can do is try and keep winning our games and it’s out of our hands now we have got to just win as many as we can and put pressure on the team above us.”
For the rest of the season McGowan believes that taking their chances will go a long way especially on their way into the finals starting against Wellington on Saturday.
“Taking chances has been our Achilles Heel all season, I think last season we were a lot freer scoring but were conceding more at the back but if we took majority of our chances we would definitely be a lot higher in the league than what we have done.”
“Up until this round we were the best defensive team in the league but we need to start taking our chances if we want to make a serious run at this (Hyundai A-league finals).”
Adelaide United travel to take on Wellington Phoenix in Round 20 of the Hyundai 2014/15 A-League season on Saturday, 7 March at the Hutt Recreation Ground, Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand. Kick off at 2:30pm ACDT.
