Newcastle lost 2-1 to Adelaide on the road on Friday night to stay on 11 points, now from 11 games. The second consecutive loss, and Wellington's 3-0 win over Perth on Sunday, dropped them from 10^th to 11^th.

Their next test is against a desperate Sydney, who have performed below expectations to sit on 12 points from nine matches.

A 77th-minute winner from Craig Goodwin proved the difference at Coopers Stadium on Friday night after maiden A-League goals to Louis D'Arrigo and Jet Connor O'Toole in the first half.

Goodwin forced a turnover from Steve Ugarkovic deep in Jets territory before a class finish. D'Arrigo had made the Jets pay for Ugarkovic's failed clearance for the opener in the sixth minute.

Deans said his side were punished for their mistakes and they needed to be better with the ball.

"You have to acknowledge when another team is better than you and Adelaide were better than us," Deans said.

"But I think we created a lot of problems for ourselves, especially in the first half. We turned the ball over very cheaply, but again due to the pressure we were put under.

"And we need to adjust when people press hard like they did in the first half. We need to be good enough to get out of it and we weren't competitive enough ... 50-50-type opportunities, we didn't win enough of them.

"Having said all that, we went into half-time 1-all, which is a good position away from home, and we believe we can win every game we play, so we wanted to go out and win the game and we didn't. So disappointing, that's the main feeling."

Deans said his side missed the skills of injured Ramy Najjarine (ankle) in midfield. It's unclear if Najjarine will return on Saturday against Sydney, while Deans' other options to refresh his midfield look limited.

Ali Abbas started ahead of Luka Prso on Friday night, while Deans said Malaysian import Liridon Krasniqi was not a first XI option yet. Ben Kantarovski is in the early stages of training in his return from long-term injury.

"Liri is possibly next week an option off the bench but we need to be careful with him," Deans said.

"He hasn't played football for three or four months now, so it's steady with him. He's an experienced footballer, he's got something different, so he's a possibility next week, if not the week after."

Regardless, Deans had faith in his midfield to bounce back against Sydney.

"Stevie Ugarkovic runs the game nearly every time we play, and Angus [Thurgate] is getting to the level where we expect him to be able to do that as well," he said.

"And Ali Abbas is an experienced player, so it's not that we didn't have the people with the skill set to [control midfield], we just had a day where we made some poor decisions and we turned the ball over cheaply.

"We just have to keep working. I think we missed Ramy Najjarine a little bit. He's got some real quality on the ball in the midfield area and he takes a lot of pressure off the team.

"We had a similar situation last week [in a 2-0 loss to Wellington]. We turned the ball over cheaply once and got scored against, and then a deflection for another goal, so we just seem to be having one of those years where we make a small mistake and we're getting punished every time.

"We talk all the time about key moments and being a winner in a key moment and being switched on and focused at both ends of the field and obviously we made a couple of mistakes.

"But you don't lose a game on the back of a couple of mistakes. We had opportunities to score goals and didn't take them. We need to improve that as well."