City count injury cost in ALM loss to Reds

Melbourne City have blown a golden chance to go top of the A-League Men table, slumping to a 2-1 loss to Adelaide United while also suffering injury scares to Scott Jamieson and Marco Tilio.

Mohamed Toure was Adelaide's hero, pouncing on Carl Jenkinson's loose backpass in the 82nd minute to drill home the winner at AAMI Park and guide United into third place, just one point behind City.

It left coach Patrick Kisnorbo, who returned to the sidelines after missing two matches through COVID-19, to rue City's failure to make their dominance count.

"We dominated. They had two shots, one was a cross, the other was a backpass from us," he said.

"We had a lot of possession, we were creating a lot of chances in good areas. Obviously we didn't score them.

"Those ones, sometimes it's a bit hard to take especially when you dominate the game for 90 minutes and you end up losing 2-1."

In City's third game in eight days, Tilio limped off after just 41 minutes while Jamieson left the field holding his hamstring in the 52nd minute.

"(Tilio) was having some tightness in the calves. That was unexpected," Kisnorbo said.

"Sometimes you can't plan for that. We would've liked to have got more out of Marco but for some reason his calves were a bit tight, hence why we had to make the substitution early.

"Jamo felt a little tweak and we didn't want to risk it."

City drew first blood when Jamieson's searching pass prompted Adelaide goalkeeper Joe Gauci to come off his line and nudge the ball into the path of Jamie Maclaren, who snared his eighth goal of the season.

Adelaide responded when Javi Lopez floated in a cross from the right and Tom Glover misjudged the flight of the ball which dropped into the City goal.

Both teams had goals disallowed for