EVERTON Tigers head coach Tony Garbelotto thinks his new look team will gel together and bounce back after losing twice at the weekend.
The Tigers suffered their first ever defeat to the Cheshire Jets at the Northgate Arena on Saturday night and 24 hours later suffered another blow at the hands of defending champions Newcastle Eagles to leave the Tigers with only one win from their first four games.
He said: “I believe we may need to read just our short term aims and give this new group of players enough time to gel.
“It is always difficult when you have to build a new team but I believe we have enough talent to come through this difficult start to the season.
“We have to analyse where we went wrong this weekend and look to build on that as we have a lot of important games coming up.
“Even though we didn’t win either game I think we can learn a lot from our mistakes and I was happy with certain elements of our play.
“But there is plenty of room to improve.”
The standard of officiating in the BBL is one area where the Tigers coach feels his side is being unfairly treated and says the men in the middle need to appreciate how his players like to play:
He adds: “With so many players being new to the BBL the referees seem to be really clamping down on our guys as maybe they are not used to seeing the way they play.
“It is a situation that is really hurting us, especially at the weekend, as our two key inside players Dzaflo Larkai and Andy Thomson were being punished at will for little or no reason.
“The referees need to start showing more respect to our guys and then you may start to see a change in our fortunes.
“We are young and inexperienced, especially in BBL terms. Even saying this, we have immense talent.”
