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Whittlesea Ranges coach Vinko Buljubasic wasn’t too disheartened following his side’s loss to St Albans on the weekend, admitting his opponents were too strong and the loss was part of his young squad’s learning curve.
Despite taking an early lead, Whittlesea conceded three unanswered goals to go down 3-1.
The former Melbourne Knights man mainly lamented avoidable mistakes by his players that led to St Albans’s goals.
“St Albans are a very good side, a very experienced side and we got punished. With a few mistakes that we made and it was hard to come back from,” Buljubasic said.
“I’ve watched St Albans quite a few times over the last few weeks and I made a combination that we’ll play with quick players, I thought they were a bit slow at the back, and it paid off in the first five minutes. I thought we were hopeful of continuing that form, but unfortunately it didn’t pay off in the end.
“We didn’t get enough players to press their back four. We held off them and unfortunately that’s not the instructions I gave them. We had to press as a unit, not just one player in tse forward line.
“We didn’t have enough chances to win the game today, St Albans were deserved winner.”
Now seven games into the season and showing inconsistent form, sitting in 10th place, the Whittlesea mentor admitted that the midfield and defence were his team’s main areas of required improvement.
“At the moment there’s a lot of improving to do, but I’m positive with the squad I’ve got, he said”
“There’s things we need to work on with this squad, especially in the middle of the park, we were lacking that grunt, winning the 50-50 balls.
“The three goals we copped, the first one was a mistake, instead of clearing the ball we held onto it and lost possession, and the free kick [was unnecessary].
“If we can stop conceding goals like that, we’ve got the firepower to score goals, so now I have to work on as a unit how defensively not to concede [soft] goals.”
However, with the oldest player in the squad being only 24 years old, Buljabasic was confident his group of youngsters would keep developing and improving, believing in his long-term vision for the club.
“We’ve got nothing to lose, we’ve just got to keep the ball on the deck and play like we have been. We’ve been unfortunately with a few of the results. As long as the players have the confidence to play the style of football I want them to, this young team will go places,” he said.
“Unfortunately there’s a few injuries at the moment but that’s going to happen throughout the season. We’ll keep working hard with this group and hopefully they’ll improve.”