Melbourne Victory boss Arthur Diles was not looking for excuses after his team’s away loss to Central Coast Mariners.
The visitors came out on top of every metric except the scoreline in the Round 15 Isuzu UTE A-League clash at polytec Stadium, which was halted for 61 minutes toward the end of the first half due to lightning strikes in the local area.
Victory were, however, undone by an impressive curling shot from Ali Auglah shortly before the weather-enforced delay to the action on Sunday evening.
Then, despite an avalanche of opportunities, and playing against 10 players for much of the second 45, they could not break through the Mariners’ defences.
Speaking during his post-match press conference, Diles delivered an honest verdict on the action away to Central Coast.
“It’s pretty clear why we didn’t get something out of that game. We just weren’t good enough. That’s the reality, that’s the truth, and we’ve got no one but ourselves to blame for that.
“Stats don’t win you games. Stats sometimes show you that you’re doing the right thing in terms of the style of football you want to play.
“In the end, they scored, and we didn’t.”
Diles also expressed frustration that Victory were unable to capitalise on any momentum from their emphatic Big Blue win on Monday before detailing how the game slipped away from them in Gosford.
“We put that game behind us. We knew this was going to be a difficult match, it’s always difficult to come here, and we knew we had to keep moving forward as a team and keep progressing and keep improving and showing that consistency that we need to show.
“And we thought we started well tonight, the first 10 minutes was a great start from us, when we probably miss a great opportunity to take the lead. And then it becomes a transition game. We start to get a little bit sloppy, and it opens up, you start to lose control.”
Watch Diles’ full press conference below.
