A-League Men: Perth Glory create unwanted history after horror 5-0 loss to Melbourne City at HBF Park

Embattled Perth Glory coach David Zdrilic says the looming international break will be crucial to get underdone players up to full speed after yet another horror defeat.

It comes as Zdrilic, in his first head coaching job, watched on as his side created a piece of unwanted history in their 5-0 thrashing at home to Melbourne City on Sunday night.

While Perth are not the first team in the A-League Men era to not win one of their opening four games, no other team in the history of the competition have conceded 13 goals in their first four matches.

Their goal difference of -12 is also the worst in league history after four games.

The Glory have not won an A-League Men’s match since February 17 — ironically, the first game watched by chairman Ross Pelligra after his takeover of the club — which stretches across 14 games.

In Perth’s past 11 competitive games dating back to last season and including their Australia Cup run, they have conceded an astounding 46 goals.

With Perth torn through by a rampant City side — who were missing Socceroos Andrew Nabbout and Marco Tilio — Zdrilic once again blamed the scoreline blowing out on players suffering injuries in pre-season, affecting their fitness over the past month.

“We’re in a position where the main group is not fit enough, and I have to try and get them fit during games,” he said.

“The first thing for us is we’ve got to get the whole group fit.

“Now we’ve got an international break, so we have to come out of that and make sure that whoever plays is is fit enough to compete at the minimum and then we go from there.”

Entering the season, much was made of Zdrilic’s tactical pressing philosohpy, but the Glory have almost completely abandoned it early in the season, which the coach again blamed on the fitness.

“We will be pressing, but it wasn’t sustainable. The players that we have at the moment, are not fit enough to sustain it,” he said.

“That wasn’t so much for me; the problem was when we did win it, we just gave it back to them.

“When we had it, we just weren’t able to find Tags (striker Adam Taggart) and when Tags had the ball, he’s got three players around him.”

There have been problems all over the park for Perth this season, with the Glory having only scored once all season and struggled to create chances.

Zdrilic labelled their defensive effort as “terrible” as Perth found themselves 2-0 down at half time and then a further goal down within 20 seconds of the restart thanks to an Oli Sail error.

“The first one went in and the second one went in and then obviously coming out of the break and conceding a goal like that, just so early and so easily, but from then, you’ve still got to manage the game and not let it get away from you,” he said.

“You’ve seen it many times in the A-League, that it can be very transitional and obviously for us trying to go forward and score a goal when we’re 3-0 down, we obviously left the door open, and a team like that, they don’t take many chances to score.

“It’s not good enough.”