Liepāja head coach Andreas Alm said his side must “rethink” their season after a 5-0 defeat by RFS, and accepted responsibility for a tactical change that he said left his players without energy.
Asked for his assessment of the match, Alm said: “Disappointing result, disappointing first half.” He added: “The first half kind of settled the game.”
Alm said Liepāja had been defensively solid before the match, but that he changed their defensive structure against RFS.
“We have played 10 games before this. We have conceded very few goals. I have to say we have been solid defending and I changed the tactics for the first time since January,” he said.
“I changed the tactics defensively because we wanted something else, to see if we can get some good attacking from that. I made a game plan. I picked the starting 11. I picked the squad and I changed the tactics. So there’s no one else than me to blame. It’s all on me.”
Alm said the plan had not helped his team deal with RFS.
“Players play the game, but sometimes they need something to work with,” he said. “You play RFS and I give them a task that was not good and then they fell through, and that’s on me.”
He said Liepāja lost energy after conceding the opening goal.
“Players looking without energy. They score the first goal and we look like we don’t have energy,” Alm said. “They come in second wave and third wave and fourth wave and a coach that puts a team on the pitch that doesn’t have energy is all on the coach. It’s all on me.”
Alm further lamented that RFS were allowed to win too comfortably.
“We come here, we have started the season so, but we’ve been solid in work ethic and defending and then we don’t do it,” he said. “I understand that RFS is a good team but still we kind of look like that. So RFS got the easiest win in a long time. They were like smoking the cigar during the first half and scoring goals and we struggled.”
Asked whether the change in defensive setup was the main reason for mistakes that led to goals, Alm said: “Yes, I think so.”
“Usually we’ve been pressing pretty solid this season. We have kept the opponent away from us and so on, but not today. Not today at all,” he said. “I introduced something new to them. Not revolution, but still enough new to see that it didn’t work.
“Maybe I should have done something during the first half, correcting it and so on. But I didn’t manage that either. So what can I say? It’s not a good day on the job for me.”
Alm also said Liepāja’s wider league position had forced a reassessment. He said the club had 12 points after 11 rounds and were 13 points behind third place.
“We need to rethink this,” he said. “We’re disappointed. We would like to be much closer to Auda. We don’t have that point. They beat us at home.
“We are struggling with catching, keep closing that gap. We had a tough start of the season and it’s three rounds almost to play and it looks really hard.”
Alm said Liepāja’s league target now had to be fourth place.
“If we are disappointed all the time by not grabbing that third place, I think we’re going to lose a lot of energy,” he said.
“We need something else and then we need to rethink it and say, OK, can we get something out of this season that is good? Yes, we cannot get a medal maybe, but like last season we are very happy to qualify for Europe.
“If we can do that, then like last season it will be a good season.”
Alm said the focus before the next match would be on responding to the defeat.
“We got beaten by five goals today, so there will be two teams trying really hard to get back into the game,” he said.
“We’re ready to work for that and I just have to do better.”
