Adelaide United coach Josep Gombau said the Reds have put Friday night’s shock 1-0 home defeat to Brisbane Roar behind them and are fully focussed for Tuesday night’s inaugural FFA Cup Final against Perth Glory at Coopers Stadium.

Gombau said defeats are par for the course in the profession of football and his troops have been professional enough to dust themselves off and front up against the Glory after a four-day period.

The Reds’ 14-match unbeaten run at home ended courtesy of a wonder strike from Roar’s Brazilian forward Henrique but Gombau said the result would not have any impact on how his players’ turn up on Tuesday night.

“I think if you are a football player you are professional enough – it’s part of your job,” Gombau said.

“It’s not that we lost and the world will finish. It’s football. When you play you can win or you can lose… we lost. It doesn’t matter.

“They are professionals… we need to check the mistakes we did, improve these mistakes, arrange a few things and be competitive next game.”

United entered the clash without talismanic playmaker Marcelo Carrusca and defender Nigel Boogaard with Gombau declaring both were carrying niggling injuries.

The Spaniard denied his side had one eye on the Glory and lost focus against the Roar.

“They are injured, there’s not another (reason),” Gombau said.

“I hope and I wish that they can play on Tuesday.”

“We take this game (against Brisbane) seriously. We prepared like every single game and I think if you see the game, we worked hard to try and win this game – we don’t have our mind thinking about the Cup game.”

For the second week running, United wasted a host of chances leaving their coach to lament more poor finishing with Sergio Cirio and Pablo Sanchez the biggest culprits; the latter squandering a one-v-one in the final minutes.

Just a week earlier, Gombau had implored his side to be more lethal in the front third and bury their goal scoring opportunities after a 2-0 win against Western Sydney Wanderers could have easily seen the Reds put six past the Asian champions.

“It’s something that we need to improve if we want to be at the top and we want to win something,” Gombau said.

“We create chances but we don’t score enough goals.”

The Cup final kicks-off at Coopers Stadium at 7pm.

Match Details
Friday, December 12

Adelaide United 0
Brisbane Roar 1 (Henrique 18’)
11,241 @ Coopers Stadium