Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi was upbeat about his sides performance despite seeing them go down 3-0 to a lethal Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
A second-half brace from Henrique and a goal to captain Matt Smith was enough to condemn Heart to their second loss of the season.
Heart took the game to the Roar for the majority of the game and looked a different side to the one that went down without a whimper to Perth Glory last weekend but still walked away with nothing.
Aloisi praised his players for their fight and claimed he could not have asked for any more from them.
“The boys put in a good performance and I think we took the game right to Brisbane especially in the first half,” Aloisi said.
“We created a lot of good chances and we stopped them from playing and we made it hard for them.
“When you come to Brisbane and you create five one on ones you think you’re gonna get more out of it.
“Little disappointed on our set pieces because the second ball we come out and leave our men, but that’s probably the only thing I’m disappointed from my players today because other than that the performance was good.
“You go 1-0 down and you have to chase the game a little bit and you leave it a bit open but we hit the post after it went 1-0 and then we had another one-on-one.
“All in all if we perform like that more often than that we’ll win the game.
“I can’t ask any more from my boys, the effort was great.”
Melbourne Heart are still without a win outside of Victoria since December 2011, with all but one of Aloisi’s 14 interstate games in charge of the club ending in a loss.
But despite the abysmal record on the road, Aloisi believes it did not serve as a distraction against the Roar.
“Not at all, if you look at the players we had out there today, we had six new players from last season so they don’t even talk about the away factor,” he said.
“And the way we performed, it didn’t look like we were too nervous about the away factor.
“Even when we went 1-0 down we kept on trying, so that’s not going to play on our mind. ”
This is a new season, fresh start. Out of the four games we’ve performed well in three, we’ve shown that we can compete with anyone, we’ve got players to come back in still, and if we keep on performing like that, then the results will come.
“You create chances, normally you’ll put more away.”