Adelaide United have gatecrashed Perth Glory’s homecoming party by claiming a smash-and-grab 2-1 win in the A-League Men.
After being forced interstate for the past three-and-a-half months, Richard Garcia’s men had an afternoon to forget on their return to Western Australia.
Goals from Hiroshi Ibusuki and Mo Toure either side of the break gave Adelaide the win and solidified their hold on third place on the ladder.
Bruno Fornaroli hit back for Glory with a 90th minute penalty but it was too little too late.
Perth now have just one win in their past six games and excluding a 10-minute spell in the first half never really threatened the Reds.
“I’m very disappointed,” Garcia said. “We are making the same errors as we did a few weeks ago.
“We keep talking about trying to eliminate individual errors but at both ends of the park we aren’t clinical.
“In and around the box we don’t put chances away and then we conceded easy goals.”
In hot conditions at HBF Park, both teams played out a tense opening half an hour with Perth the first outfit to try to push the envelope.
Fornaroli and Callum Timmins missed first-half chances to give the home side the lead and the Reds made Perth pay for their wastefulness in front of goal at the other end.
Ibusuki forced Liam Reddy to tip his shot behind and the Japanese forward then climbed above Jonathan Aspropotamitis at the resulting corner to power home a header for their opener.
Since signing for Adelaide, Ibusuki has four goals across his first nine games in a promising start to life under Carl Veart.
“It’s a difficult place to come and I don’t think we’d not won here for quite a few years,” Veart said.
“The boys dug in and worked hard and got the three points.
“The game flattened out a bit and then we had a little bit of interest in the last five minutes.”
Perth were forced into a change at the break when Reddy was taken off for Cameron Cook with a hip flexor issue.
Cook’s first impact was one he would no doubt rather forget.
Adelaide substitute Toure burst down the right and went to the byline where he opted to shoot rather than square for the supporting Reds cast in the middle.
Toure’s effort bobbled under Cook’s reach and trickled over the line to give Adelaide a comfortable buffer for the remaining half hour.
Try as they might, Perth didn’t look like scoring and their sole goal came when Michael Jakobsen brought down Pacifique Niyongabire in the box and Fornaroli slotted the penalty with ease.
