Melbourne Heart coach John van ‘t Schip has no interest in trying to save Friday night’s clash with Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium – he’s expecting his players to take it up to the competition leaders.
Melbourne Heart coach John van ‘t Schip has no interest in trying to save Friday night’s clash with Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium – he’s expecting his players to take it up to the competition leaders.
Van ‘t Schip believes that going defensive would be counter-productive against the Roar who are smarting from last Sunday’s loss to Sydney FC which ended the club’s record 36-match unbeaten streak.
“We want to win or lose in the way that we have in our mind, not change for one game and go and totally lay in front of the goal and hope they don’t score,” said van ‘ t Schip after training at LaTrobe University on Thursday morning.
“I don’t think that’s the right approach … and for our team, at least, that’s not going to work.”
“If we can play well and do the pressing in a good way and try to play as much as possible our own game, then we will not be that much defending.”
Asked whether he expects Roar coach Ange Postecoglou to tinker with his game plan in the wake of the loss to Sydney, van ‘t Schip said: “Why should they change something that was good for 36, 37 games?”
“The confidence in the team will not have any problems after the loss of last week.”
“It’s up to us to make it very difficult so that when we recover the ball in our half we look for our chances to hurt them.”
“We’ve talked about it, we’ve worked on it and tomorrow we will see what will happen.”
Van ‘t Schip said he would retain the same squad that accounted for Wellington Phoenix 1-0 in Morwell last weekend, and expects the starting XI to be unchanged.
That means there’s no room for former captain Simon Colosimo, forward Alex Terra or midfielder Wayne Srhoj who’s available after suspension.
The coach said he took careful note of how the the Sky Blues went about it at Kogarah last Sunday.
“We played against (Brisbane) last year in the same way Sydney played against them last week,” van ‘t Schip said.
“We were leading at half-time one-nil and could have easily been two, three-nil.”
“We didn’t manage to finish it off and that’s when they came back in the game.”
