Williams surprised after defeat

Playing in his new role at central midfield, Williams struggled to link up with his forwards Chris Klein and Jamaican-born Jeff Cunningham in a new look offensive strike force, but was shocked after looking at the match stats afterwards.

"I'm surprised at how we played," said Williams. "I thought we would play much better."

"We just came out a little slower than Chivas today (Sunday). We couldn't hold the ball and get passes forward to our forwards.

"We got in the hole. In the second half we played much better and we need to pick up on the second half next week.

Team must defend as unit

With Cunningham and Klein up top Williams was not too concerned about the scoring division, but said the team must concentrate on playing together in defence.

"I'm not worried about the offense, we just need to defend as a team together. That's first and foremost, especially on the road. We need to hold the fort a little longer and not let them score in the first half."

Both sides looked sluggish throughout the game, with Real struggling the most at finding the passes and winning the high challenges and second ball attempts.

Ellinger disappointed with team work

"The story of the game was how many times we turned the ball over in the midfield and created bad situations for ourselves," said Real head coach John Ellinger.

"You just can't keep making those kinds of mistakes, giveaways, and we seemed to do that a lot.

"It's disappointing because I know we're better than what we showed. We have too much experience on the field to give the ball away as many times as we did," added Ellinger.

USA international Ante Razov scored twice and Juan Pablo Garcia hit a 25th minute strike to ensure victory for Chivas.

Cunningham feels all is not lost after defeat

Despite signs of his familiar offensive flourish moves in small patches of the game, Cunningham was unable to score for his Real side, but he said all is not lost.

"I'm going to be positive about it," Cunningham said. "You have a new group of players and it's going to take a while for us to gel together and today wasn't the best performance.

"I still think we're a very good team and after we make some technical improvements, we'll be okay. Right now we need to concentrate on defending as a team and once that happens and we're not giving up goals I can guarantee we'll start scoring."

Ellinger also saw the need to look beyond the defeat and said the team must now build from the experience.

"It's a long season," he said. "I'm not going to push any panic buttons because of this."

Real will now look to redeem themselves when they travel on Saturday to face another strong team in FC Dallas, who registered an exciting 3-2 victory over archrival Chicago Fire.