MIAMI, Florida — Though pleased to have come away with a convincing victory in his team’s opening game at the 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup Tournament, head coach Theodore Whitmore has warned his players there is still a lot of work to do.

Whitmore, in only his fourth game at the Gold Cup Tournament, saw his Jamaica team hammer Caribbean neighbours Grenada 4-0 at the Home Depot Centre on Monday night.

It was the biggest margin of victory for Jamaica, who are now making their eighth appearance at the tournament.

“It’s a good way to start, but I think we could have scored a lot more (goals) tonight,” Whitmore told the media at game’s end.

“Except for complacency and the fact that our finishing let us down, the overall performance of the team was excellent. It was basically a team effort, but we still have some work to do in terms of team play,” he asserted.

“Yes, we kept a lot of possession at times, which was good, but the places where we kept the possession weren’t satisfactory to us, but overall I thought the guys gave a good account of themselves,” added the former Reggae Boyz star player, who was notching his second victory in four games at the Gold Cup.

Jamaica, through goals from Luton Shelton (21st), Ryan Johnson (39th), Demar Phillips (79th), and substitute Omar Daley (84th), swamped Grenada to assume pole position in Group B with three points, two ahead of Honduras and Guatemala, who played to a 0-0 result in the night’s other game. Grenada are rooted at the foot of the table without a point.

Though the Reggae Boyz dominated play, they proved wasteful in front of goal, as they should have won by a much larger margin.

“I think we have some work to do around the back and again finishing let us down, but I only hope some of those goals are left for the rest of the competition,” mused the soft-spoken Whitmore.

“We came here to play three games in the round, we’re looking for a semi-final berth and I just think the guys went out there and played,” he added.

Whitmore was also pleased with the manner in which the Jamaicans executed some of the tactics devised at the training camp in Brazil, particularly the first goal.

“It’s something we’ve been working on over the past couple of days and it worked in Brazil. Some of the things we saw tonight (Monday night) were things we brought from the training ground,” he said.

The coaching staff was also pleased with the performance of the substitutes, particularly Keammar Daley, who played just behind the front three.

“This is what they are here for, once we can pull out a player and put in another player and get the same quality, that is what we are looking for,” said a pleased Whitmore.

“I’m very pleased with Keammar Daley when he went on… I think (he) brought something to the game that we were lacking, and I keep saying ‘Keammar Daley just needs to get the confidence and the belief that he’s the one to replace the Theodore Whitmore that we’ve been talking about,'” he declared.

Meanwhile, Michael Adams, the coach of Grenada, was left a dejected man licking his wounds after the battering.

“I’m very disappointed with our performance because we had a game plan and from the off we didn’t stick to it. We talked about denying the Jamaicans space and time on the ball and in fact, from the outset we gave them time.

“We surrendered and let them come at us and a team with that type of patience and discipline that they play with they hurt us,” bemoaned Adams.

He added: “We should have played closer to them, we should have played higher up the park. It’s a horrible result.”

Now he believes his team must change tactics, because they arrived at the tournament with their backs against the wall and the situation has worsened.

“What we’ll have to do is regroup, re-find that confidence and we tactically have to change. What we did today just did not work… we’ll just have to hope that we can come back and steal a result,” he said.

He noted that his team got moved around the park so much that in the end they just got fatigued, which led to poor decision-making.

“I think at 3-0 down our confidence went and it showed, and Jamaica’s confidence rose and in the end that told,” he added.

And though he would have preferred it otherwise, he was impressed with the Jamaicans, whom his side took to extra-time in the Digicel Caribbean Cup semi-finals last December in Martinique.

“I think that they kept the ball well. I think that they moved the ball around well. I think we allowed them to do that, but nevertheless, they took advantage of what we gave them.

“I think they played with patience and it’s good to watch a Caribbean side play like that because in the Caribbean we tend to want to get the ball forward as quickly as possible.

“They weren’t afraid to restart and they played what I call the third man running very well; they popped the ball in, popped it back out, then hit the width and they did that well,” he conceded.