Melbourne Victory interim head coach Steve Kean lamented missed chances after a 2-1 loss to Macarthur in the A-League on Thursday.
Victory went ahead through Elvis Kamsoba at AAMI Park before Markel Susaeta equalised in the first half.
But Victory squandered numerous chances before James Meredith scored a 69th-minute winner for Macarthur.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Kean discussed the game and the missed opportunities.
on the game…
“To be honest if we had got a point I would’ve been disappointed. Not to get anything is incredibly disappointing because I think first half is probably the best we’ve played in the last four or five matches as far as creating chances. The disappointing thing is we never took them because the game in all honesty should be finished at half-time. I thought we were excellent first half and we should be out of sight by the time the half-time whistle blows and then we give too many set-plays away in the second part of the game and they’re a powerful, tall, athletic side and they were causing us problems from the set-plays, but a lot of positives because the first half was excellent.”
on missed chances…
“We can only put people in the right positions in front of goal and it’s just that little bit of finesse in front of goal in the six-yard box to get a goal. It wasn’t for a want of trying. I can’t fault the players’ effort, commitment, they were absolutely excellent and they’re disappointed because they know they’re playing against a side where we should’ve been getting three points and they find themselves in a high position on the table and we’re looking, scratching our heads because we thought we were overall better tonight than the scoreline suggests so disappointing. But, when we pick the bones out of it, we can see that we’ve created chances, we’ve put a good technical side against the rack and stretched them in the first half and time and time again we’ve asked questions of them so lots and lots of positives.”
on Kamsoba…
“I think what Elvis gives you is a dynamic that the defenders don’t really know what he’s going to do. Is he going to link play, is he going to spin one around the corner like he did and then get after it? He’s really, really difficult when he turns tight, where his low centre of gravity in getting away from people so he causes problems. I think if he can back defenders into the box there’s always a chance that somebody might mistime a tackle so overall I thought he was good, not only with the ball, I think when the ball was on the opposite side he was good at tucking in and putting pressure on their second holding midfield player which then nullified a lot of their attack, especially in the first half. He played very well Elvis and he gives you that little spark and something different in a wide area and I thought he was good.”
