Eric Gerets: Failure to fix leaky defence has cost Al Jazira a shot at silverware

Eric Gerets, the Al Jazira coach, acknowledged that his team's leaky defence is the main reason the Abu Dhabi club have ended the season without silverware.

Despite leading Al Jazira to second in the league, Eric Gerets' future at the club remains uncertain. Christopher Pike / The National

ABU DHABI // Eric Gerets, the Al Jazira coach, has acknowledged that his leaky defence has cost the Abu Dhabi club a chance of winning silverware this season.

Al Jazira, runners-up in the Arabian Gulf League to Al Ain, saw their final chance of winning a trophy vanish on Thursday night when they were stunned 3-2 by Ajman in the President’s Cup.

Scoring goals has not been an issue this season, with Al Jazira finding the back of the net more than any other club. However, in a damning statistic, only the relegated sides of Kalba and Ajman conceded more than Gerets’s side.

And the Belgian coach has admitted that it was his team’s failure to keep the goals out that has ultimately cost them this season.

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“We tried our best to fix this problem, but we just couldn’t with the limited resources,” said Gerets, whose Al Jazira future looks increasingly uncertain following the President’s Cup defeat.

“I will submit my report of the 2014/2015 season to the club management and the proposals and recommendations for the next season as I have a two-year contract.”

On the defeat to Ajman, Gerets felt his team’s failure to score from the chances they created was to blame.

“We had seven clear scoring chances in this game and if we can’t score from such opportunities we don’t deserve to win,” Gerets said.

“I think we did everything well but score. Then the players got exhausted in the last 20 minutes because of the humid weather.”

Meanwhile, Manuel Cajuda, the Ajman coach, was ecstatic and insisted it was a “glorious night” for his team following their relegation from the top flight.

“We now have another chance to prove how good a team we are,” the Portuguese said.

“I had this gut feeling in the morning of the match that we will win against Jazira. Perhaps, I may have been the only man in Ajman to have this thought so I shared it with my players.

“I told them to go with the confidence of winning and we can pull it off. That’s what the players went and did on the pitch.

“We were 2-1 behind at the half time still we were confident. My instructions to the players were not to give them much time to settle and use the counter attack every time we had possession.”

Cajuda also made a tactical change for the Moroccan Driss Fettouhi to take up the role of playmaker and he scored the winner in the added time to seal the game for Ajman.

“Only during the last three games in the league we found out where he fitted in best in the line-up. He played an excellent game as the playmaker and this is his role in the team,” he said.

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