Adam Taggart says the Jets are still focused on securing an A-League finals berth, despite last Friday’s loss to Perth.
Hunter Ports Newcastle Jets striker Adam Taggart says the Jets are still focused on securing an A-League finals berth, despite last Friday-s gut-wrenching 2-1 loss to Perth Glory at Hunter Stadium.
Despite dominating possession and creating significantly more goal-scoring opportunities than their opponents, the Jets finished the match empty-handed after the Glory snatched all three points with a stoppage time winner.
However, Taggart said the Jets are still confident they can finish the season in the A-League-s top six, despite the difficulty of the task facing them.
“We-ve just got to look to bounce back next week and really try to get the three points from our next two games going into the finals,” Taggart said.
“We-ve got a quality team. Once we get that luck back on our side, we can really go forward.
“We-ve got two hard games coming up and I-m sure the boys are really pumped up for it.”
Despite the result not being in their favour, Taggart said there were a number of positives to take from the Jets- performance against the Glory, particularly the way the team responded to being beaten 5-0 by Melbourne Victory a week earlier.
“I think all the players wanted to show their character and come out and put in a really good performance and come away with a win,” Taggart said.
“I think we got one of those two things. We had the good performance, but we just couldn-t get the win under our belt.
“We created a lot of chances and at the end of the day, we probably needed to put ours away.
“They-ve had two chances and put them away, so it-s probably come down to a bit of luck and they-ve got the last goal right at the end there which was extremely disappointing for us.
“I think it was just one of those days where they weren-t going in for us.
“You can talk about execution and finishing and stuff like that, but on any other day they might have gone in. Tonight luck just wasn-t on our side.”
Another 10,000 plus crowd was at Hunter Stadium for the clash with the Glory and Taggart praised the club-s Members and supporters for their passion and commitment to the Jets.
“The Members and supporters here are great. They-ve always turned out in numbers and we couldn-t have asked for anything more really,” he said.
“They-ve come out and made some noise for us, really tried to carry us along and it-s just disappointing that we couldn-t give them a win to go home with.”
