In the lead-up to the game van’t Schip said he was aware of the counter-attacking threat Brisbane Roar presented and, after Socceroo Jamie Maclaren opened the scoring after 10 minutes, City maintained possession but could not capitalise.

City finished the game without a shot on target and while the Dutchman remained positive, he was disappointed with the lack of creativity considering the 60-40 possession in their favour.

“We didn’t create enough and they defended well and on the counter they caused a few problems,” van’t Schip said.

“We weren’t paying attention or we weren’t positioned well enough and of course we were trying to push (forward) more and more.

“It’s a work in progress what we are doing. It’s the way we want to play; it’s the way we want to move forward and I think there were a lot of good passages again, a lot of good play that looked good, but I think maybe we had too many players who did not really have their best day.”

Stars Bruno Fornaroli, Fernando Brandan and Tim Cahill were kept quiet, ironically after City’s front third was lauded by the footballing public.

Cahill, who missed out on the Socceroos squad as a fitness precaution managed 90 minutes against the Roar.

Van’t Schip’s advice from the medical staff was positive on the Socceroo legend.

“That’s the way it worked out, we had contact with him at half time and from the bench and he was OK, he felt OK, so we kept him on the pitch,” he said.

“So in the last minutes of the game, we put him more in the box and he came through the game in a good way. Hopefully he pulls up in a good way, so that’s positive.”

City now have a six day break and return next Thursday night against Newcastle Jets.

“Unfortunately tonight it didn’t work out for us, but it doesn’t mean we have to change our philosophy,” van’t Schip said.

“We have to look at other ways to improve and do things better against teams who are not giving a lot of space away. So that is something we have to work on.”