Tony Popovic has vowed his side won’t make the same mistakes in next week’s local derby as the ones that saw the Wanderers fall to a shock loss to Wellington on New Year’s Day.
Tony Popovic has vowed his side won’t make the same mistakes in next week’s local derby as the ones that saw the NRMA Insurance Western Sydney Wanderers fall to a shock loss at home to Wellington Phoenix on New Year’s Day.
The Wanderers slumped to their first defeat at Pirtek Stadium in 360 days after squandering a second half lead to go down 3-1 to the resurgent Phoenix.
It was just the club’s second loss of the season and could see them lose more ground to league-leaders Brisbane, who play the Melbourne Victory on Saturday night.
“We certainly will learn from this experience,” a disappointed Popovic said afterwards.
“It’s a first for us this (season), the players are disappointed but we’re not going to look to deep into it.
“As long as the lessons are learned we move on to a good game which is a derby so we look forward to that.”
And they will need to learn from those mistakes if they are to take bragging rights against Sydney FC in nine days time.
Despite dominating the majority of the match, the Wanderers didn’t go in front until 17 minutes into the second half when Mark Bridge finished off some brilliant lead-up play by Shinji Ono.
But the lead lasted just six minutes before Tyler Boyd equalised and then Belgian Stein Huysegems struck twice in five minutes to condemn the Wanderers to a shock defeat.
“After (the equaliser) we got punished for our mistakes,” Popovic lamented.
“We lost the ball in our own third and they punished us…credit goes to them.
“At 1-1 I was still comfortable. We probably tried too hard, we tried to force the issue because it was 1-1 and we got punished for some errors.
“(But) it’s the first time we play at home (in a year) and lose. We’ll move on quickly.”
