Michael Garcia won’t allow an occasional flat performance to derail his preparation for the coming National Premier Leagues season. Back-to-back losses have put Inglewood United on the cusp of an early exit from the Night Series, however, Garcia, who was appointed first team coach in late August, has every confidence his side is on course to improve on the efforts of last season.

“At the moment we are looking to develop and establish our identity and, with quite a few new players and the squad not yet settled, that may take some time and lead to the odd inconsistent performance or two,” Garcia commented. “But that is what we are using the Night Series for. Our priority is to make sure we are ready for the season ahead.”

Sunday’s poor showing against Sorrento, who claimed victory by 2-0, was an important part of that learning curve. “We lacked intensity and gave the ball away to our opposition far too often, causing ourselves more problems than we may have had if we’d been more composed in possession,” said Garcia, a former Australia youth international.

“We had our chances to score, they had a few themselves,” he added. “One of their goals was from our mistake and I thought we had a fair penalty shout turned down – had that gone our way it may have changed things. In the end though, regardless of the scoreline, the performance was below that of our previous two games.”

A lot has been achieved in Garcia’s first six months at the helm and the 37-year old feels he has all the ingredients for 2015 to be a success. “I’m learning about the requirements of coaching on and off the park at senior level and the players are still getting used to my style of coaching,” he said. “That chemistry may take a while but I’m confident we are on the right track.”

“We have a good squad, it’s not yet finalised as there are players we are still looking at and others that are injured or going away during the season,” Garcia continued. “At this stage we haven’t set any goals for the league but, obviously, we want to finish as high up the ladder as we can. For me, the first checkpoint is ensuring we improve on last year’s result.”