National football coach John Barry Nusum has expressed “mixed feelings” over the Gombey Warriors’ disappointing start to their Concacaf Nations League campaign in the Caribbean.

Bermuda lost all four of their opening League B Group B fixtures against Guadeloupe, St Lucia and Barbados, leaving them anchored at the bottom of the table with no points and staring down the barrel of relegation.

While disappointed over the results, Nusum believes that there are still positives that can be drawn from the performance

“Obviously this is a disappointing start to the campaign and there are mixed feelings as we didn’t take care of critical moments in the matches. We would have good spells undone by poor defending,” he told The Royal Gazette.

“While it’s a transitional team at the moment, with younger players taking on the responsibilities and leadership roles, we still have to be better at managing in-game situations. Going up 1-0 in three of the matches and getting nothing out of them can’t continue and it will not be the norm.

“On the other hand, we played some good, patient football with the ball and had several moments when we could have killed off a match. We have to take advantage of those moments and make teams adjust to our starts.

“Overall, the disappointment of losing always outweighs positives, but there were a lot of good things in the matches and in the culture we are looking to build. We have the building blocks and will be competitive, but we have learnt some heavy lessons that will be a staple of our defensive mould moving forward.

“We have a group of young men who displayed tremendous leadership qualities and the experience will now only make us stronger. It was good to get young boys like Blayz Borgesson and Emeer Peets their first caps; getting involved they did really well.”

With their hopes of qualifying for a second Gold Cup already dashed, the Gombey Warriors will now attempt to avoid relegation from League B in their remaining fixtures against Guadeloupe and St Lucia in the next Fifa international window

“The goal is to go into these last two matches with the belief of establishing the good parts of our game and growing from the bad parts to put a full match together,” Nusum said.

“The young men have fight, tenacity and most importantly a desire to represent themselves and Bermuda to the best we possibly can. It is surprising but the mood is in a special place considering the losses, with the goal of getting back together in the next window and making things right.”