Newcastle Jets coach Craig Deans addressed the media following Sunday’s loss to Adelaide.
Here’s what he had to say.
Comments on the first half:
“To be honest we need to start the press conference and apologise from myself and the players on the first half performance. For the people that came out tonight in the weather that we’ve had and to dish that up is unacceptable.
“We weren’t prepared to do the hard work in the first half, we weren’t prepared to do the dirty work in weather like that.”
Time for changes?
“Look the people that come on, Rami’s been out for a while, he’s had to work his way, he’s had one full week of training in the last 6 weeks, so it’s been difficult to introduce him at the right time.
“Liri’s not played a lot of football in the last 12 months so it’s been working on him, trying to get him match fit.
“We could talk about starting team and tactics and all that sort of stuff tonight, but the bottom line is we weren’t prepared to do what we had to do to win the game and we let it go in the first 40 minutes and it was all over.”
https://players.brightcove.net/5498268485001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6242489968001
How do you change it?
“They should be in their now understanding, they’re professional footballers, they know what the requirements are, and the work rate and the disciplines are, we are not disciplined enough often enough.
“We need to be a little bit more humble with our football and not be so overly confident and arrogant to think we can play any way we want to play whenever we want to play, it’s not that easy a league, you have to be more respectful of the opposition and more respectful of conditions and we just didn’t do it in the first half.”
Koutroumbis, Boogaard & Duncan:
“I think it was just a blocked tackle so they usually end up just ankles or medials, knees, but look, for Johnny to come off and go down its obviously something more than just a little knock, so look obviously we will have a look at him tomorrow.
“He’s (Boogaard) not going to play next week, Lachy’s been out for a little while, so he needs to get on the park and play because he’s going to have to play next week.
“He’s had a little niggle for a couple of weeks, and I backed his judgement on his ability and his fitness, but I think last week there were little things creeping in that showed the injury is probably impacting on him more than he probably wanted to let on.
“But I like the attitude of not wanting to let the team down and sacrifice yourself.”
https://players.brightcove.net/5498268485001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6242489808001
Table’s taking shape – crunch time?
“It’s crunch time tonight, it’s crunch time every week. We’re in a situation now that every time we don’t get three points, we make it more difficult for ourselves and that’s the mentality that we need to approach every game with.
“There is no more time to talk about we’re only 6 points from this or 8 points from this, we need to win games of football and we need to do it very quickly.”
Losses are accumulating, how do you combat that?
“It’s hard work, it’s making people more accountable for their own individual performance and the team as a unit for their performance, because it’s not one person that loses you a game, it’s the whole 20 odd players and the coaching staff.”
