Perth Glory coach Alistair Edwards is adamant his side will be better for the experience of Sunday's comprehensive season-opening 3-1 loss to Adelaide United at Coopers Stadium.

Edwards lamented allowing the Reds easy goals, which blew out the margin, but he believes his young Perth outfit were far from disgraced and will only improve.

"I was disappointed to lose the game and disappointed with the way we conceded the goals - it was a bit too easy for our liking," said Edwards, frustrated from the sidelines as Jeronimo Neumann strolled in to score a first-half brace and Fabio Ferreira tightened the screws further with a quality goal in the 64th minute.

"But apart from that, there were some good signs. The goals that were conceded were very stoppable from our point of view.

"If anything, that's a positive sign moving forward - it's something we can work on and make sure those type of situations don't happen in the future.

"But overall apart from that, things were quite OK from our point of view."

Among the newcomers who caught Edwards' eye were Brazilian recruit Sidnei, who set up Glory's only goal - scored by a rejuvenated Ryo Nagai - and regularly worried United with his pace and drive, and the coach's son, talented teenager Ryan Edwards.

"We had a few guys playing their debuts in the A-League and I thought they all did well," Edwards said. "Sidnei did very well and Ryan up front did some good stuff.

"Some of the young boys did well and if we took our chances it could have been a lot closer. We had a number of chances to score and on another day they would have gone into the back of the net."

Attempting to claw their way back from way behind, Glory had a glimmer of hope when two Adelaide red cards saw the hosts reduced to just nine men, but the visitors were unable to force a shot on goal.

The Reds racked up an A-League record eight yellow cards all up, while Perth accrued four.

Despite the high number of bookings, Edwards believed there was no out-of-the-ordinary spice in the context and that referee Ben Williams made the correct calls.

"They were definitely cards," Edwards said. "They were fouls but there was just a lot of them. There wasn't any niggle in the game.

"The referee was right - there just happened to be a lot of them."