WESTERN United are looking to regroup quickly after their A-League Men premiership aspirations suffered a serious blow in a 4-1 loss to Wellington Phoenix at Morshead Park last Saturday.<\/p>\n
Needing a win to keep pressure on league leaders Melbourne City, second-placed United found themselves down 3-0 at halftime thanks to goals from Scott Wootton, Jaushua Sotirio and Gael Sandoval.<\/p>\n
Phoenix then absorbed Steven Lustica’s 54th-minute strike and added a second Sotirio goal to seal the win.<\/p>\n
With 21 games played, United were eight points adrift of City, who lost there their 24th game on Saturday night to Melbourne Victory.<\/p>\n
“At the moment, we’re not thinking about that,” said Western United coach John Aloisi of deficit.<\/p>\n
“We’re dealing with a bad loss and a heavy loss and it’s making sure that we still keep our heads held high.<\/p>\n
“Because we’ve had a good season so far and we’ll keep fighting right to the end.<\/p>\n
“I’m thinking more about let’s prepare well for the next two games [against Perth Glory and Macarthur next Saturday and the following Tuesday in Tasmania] to make sure that we recover well.”<\/p>\n
Despite dominating the territory and possession battle across the opening half an hour, Wooten’s 29th-minute goal from a corner served as a gut punch for United.<\/p>\n
Sotirio’s goal in transition and Sandoval’s penalty on the stroke of halftime then put the game out of reach.<\/p>\n
Desperately needing a positive result of their own after losing their previous two games by a combined 11-0 scoreline, the win moved Phoenix back into fifth on the ALM table ahead of a mid-week meeting with Perth.<\/p>\n
“We learn from our mistakes,” Phoenix coach Ufuk Talay said.<\/p>\n
“Not the way I wanted to learn, conceding 11 goals in two games, but sometimes that needs to happen.<\/p>\n
“Western United are a very good team, they defend well and we wanted them to come out so we could expose them in transition, and I think we did that very well today.”<\/p>\n
After gaining notoriety for 1-0 wins at the start of the season, the four goals conceded mean United have now conceded 12 goals in their last five games, but Aloisi isn’t ringing alarm bells yet.<\/p>\n
“Defensively you’re going to have moments in the season that things might go against you,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We have to quickly get over it.”<\/p>\n
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