Kosmina rues silly mistakes

Adelaide United coach John Kosmina highlighted silly mistakes as the reason for the Reds’ 2-1 loss at the hands of Central Coast on Saturday.

The result saw the Mariners leapfrog the Hindmarsh Stadium outfit into top spot on the A-League ladder by one point.

Having made four changes to his match-day squad Kosmina conceded the result, while not ideal, still showed promising signs.

“All in all some of the football wasn’t too bad,” Kosmina said.

“But we made some silly mistakes and let the Mariners get the three points. It’s probably one we will look at and say it got away.

“We had good opportunities to take control of the game and we did at stages, but we didn’t keep control of it.

“We got caught on a counter attack (for Nick Montgomery’s winner.) We were in a good attacking situation and we got done on the break, we still had enough bodies there to keep the ball.”

The 56-year-old praised the performance of young goalkeeper Paul Izzo who replaced Eugene Galekovic (Socceroo duty) between the sticks.

“It was a big step up for him. He was good early on,” Kosmina said.

“He was aggressive. He attacked the ball in the air. He dropped it but he came down on top of somebody and he recovered. His kicking was up and down but for a 17-year-old kid I think he did a great job.”