Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi remained defiant over his ability to manage his failing squad, which he feels has been performing well without much luck.
With Heart now 16 games without a win, the latest being to local rivals Melbourne Victory, pressure has mounted on Aloisi from fans and media alike.
Aloisi has continually reiterated his will to keep fighting, and was firm in his stance that he would not throw in the towel.
“At the moment I think I’m the man for this job and I’ll try my hardest with the other coaches, with everyone in the team, with the players to bring this club to where we think it should be,” Aloisi said.
“If the board don’t think I’m good enough to take this club forward then they’ll decide.”
Though the result was a negative one, Heart began the match with vigour and intent.
The turning point came when Patrick Kisnorbo was shown a straight red for a studs up challenge on Connor Pain, a decision which was not well received by Aloisi.
“In my opinion I thought the referee had a terrible night – he didn’t have control at all.
“We don’t want our defenders going to ground there but also not understanding the consistency of the referee, when Connor Pain goes in studs up on [Massimo] Murdocca, I don’t know that there’s too much of a difference.
“Willo goes 1v1 just gets tackled at the edge of the box, not a yellow card, Broxham doesn’t get a yellow card for kicking the ball away and right at the end of the game he gets a yellow card.
“It doesn’t make sense but he’s the referee so he knows what he’s doing.”
Even after going down to ten men, Aloisi felt his side had the chances to make a difference.
“Mate [Dugandzic] in the six yard box should’ve hit it first time, Harry had that shot that went just past the post,” he said.
“We had to try and create some chances and try and get back into the game – we still had our opportunities even with 10 v 11.”
Aloisi also refused to concede his side was second best in the derby, citing the lost at home to Sydney FC back in Round 6 as the only match they have been outplayed in.
Instead, he was more worried with his side’s inability to put teams to the sword when they have had the opportunities.
“We got a team that can beat anyone in this league and tonight we were on top of them, the red card ended up costing us,” he said.
“We just have to make sure we quickly turn it around and beat Wellington on Friday night here because we believe we got a team that can win against anyone.”