Wellington Phoenix coach Ufuk Talay had no complaints about the red card issued to striker David Ball during the first half of Sunday’s dour 2-0 defeat to A-League leaders Central Coast Mariners.
But he could not hide his frustration after Ball’s reckless challenge on Matt Simon turned the game in the high-flying Mariners’ favour, and further depleted his injury-hit squad.
“Playing with 10 men for 60 minutes doesn’t help,” Talay said. “But I thought the red card was a red card to be honest.
“We started off well, we got into good areas and didn’t capitalise again – as we normally do. Then going down to 10 men made it difficult.
“In the second half I went to a tactical change so we would put more pressure on the ball, and I thought we did, but even then they created opportunities from our mistakes.”
Simon capitalised on some poor defending from substitute Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi to open the scoring for the Mariners in the 40th minute before Hudson-Wihongi capped off a forgettable performance by conceding a penalty early in the second half, which captain Oliver Bozanic blasted into the roof of the net.
“We conceded that penalty where again it’s a soft penalty that we gave away, we should’ve cleared our lines when we didn’t and they ended up getting the second goal.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow. Going down to 10 men for 60 minutes is not a workable place.”
The Phoenix have now lost four of their first six games and remained rooted in 11th place on the ladder.
To add to their misery, the injury list is growing after centre-backs Luke DeVere (knee) and Joshua Laws (ankle) were forced off the field during the game, joining Tomer Hemed, Jaushua Sotirio and Cameron Devlin on the sidelines.
Former Sydney FC midfielder Sam McIllhatton has been training with the Phoenix throughout pre-season and could be offered an emergency contract but Talay did not rule out sending an SOS to the Wellington-based reserve team ahead of next week’s clash against Western Sydney Wanderers to bolster his squad.
Ball will also miss the next game after being slapped with an automatic one-game suspension, opening the door for promising New Zealand under-20 international Ben Waine to get a rare start in the A-League.
