Coolen blames fear of errors for loss

Adelaide United coach Rini Coolen blamed a fear of making errors for the demoralising 3-0 loss to Gold Coast United on Friday.

The cautious approach was exposed by Gold Coast’s counter-attacking gameplan as they found goals through Ben Halloran and Marceo Rigters in the space of 18 minutes in the opening half.

Coolen saw the loss as one of the more disappointing of the season on the back of the positive display in the 1-1 draw with Melbourne last week.

“I definitely didn’t have the feeling before the game that we were going to struggle because of our last game against Melbourne Victory where we got some confidence, played some better football and got a good point,” Coolen said.

“The whole week of training was at a good enough level to make the next step and finally win a home game.”

“You have to win your home games to make some steps up the ladder … and we can’t play like that and ask of people to come and support us – it’s not acceptable.”

“If you want to use your supporters to bring you to another level then you have to play better football to get that support.”

“It wasn’t happening Friday and it was very disappointing.”

After conceding a second in the 36th minute, Coolen felt the goal sapped all the confidence out of his side as they became reluctant to take risks.

“After we copped that second goal we lost all the confidence that we had and I could see the team getting down and that’s not necessary from what I saw last week (against Melbourne) and in training sessions ,” Coolen said.

“I prefer that my players go on the park and don’t be afraid to make mistakes, but they were scared.”

Gold Coast coach Miron Bleiberg celebrated his side’s highest winning margin this season and only the second time they had kept a clean sheet.

But he refused to believe it was Gold Coast’s best performance of the season suggesting his side’s early goal was pivotal in gaining the upper hand to go and get a ‘good win’ in a battle between two teams severely lacking confidence.

“It was not that we were much better then Adelaide – both teams are on the bottom for a reason,” Bleiberg said.

“One of the reasons is that when you lose you start to lose confidence and every player instead of playing 110 percent of his ability plays 70 or 60, and that’s what happened to Adelaide.”

“It was a game between second-last and last, and it was obvious whoever scored first that it would put the other team deeper into a non-confidence mode.”

“Once we scored first that’s what happened to Adelaide, but it could have been the other way around exactly if they had scored first.”