The Brisbane Roar could be forgiven for lacking a bit of pep heading into their third game in eight days, but coach Ange Postecoglou says his team have an unshakeable self-belief heading into their clash with the Melbourne Victory.
After dominating Newcastle on the way to a 1-1 draw last Saturday and then thumping Central Coast 2-0 on Wednesday night, Brisbane are out to settle the score with the Victory, the only team to have beaten them in ten games so far this season.
The Victory enter the contest after a seven day break, but Postecoglou says his side have laid the foundations with a hard pre-season and shouldn’t be at a disadvantage against their fresh opponents.
“At the end of the day, there’s a game on and I assume everyone’s had the fixture list for a while, so you get prepared for that. We certainly knew we had three games this week,”he said.
“We’re quite confident with the work we’ve done that we’ll be able to play our game and play it out for 90 minutes, so hopefully there’s no advantage or disadvantage either way.”
After welcoming 12 new faces to their squad for the Hyundai A-League 2010/11 season, the Roar have shown consummate professionalism, and it’s clear that Postecoglou attributes much of their early success to the longest pre-season of any club and a continually strong work-ethic.
The Roar, who sit second on the ladder, have conceded only six goals this season, but three were against the Melbourne Victory, who have beaten the Roar in six of the last seven contests between the sides.
Postecoglou warned against tipping the Victory on these stats alone.
“All those kind of things you can look at in two ways you can make it a bogey thing, or you can make it another challenge.”
“This is a brand new team and I think they’re setting their own standards. We’re tough at home, we’re resilient away, and I think the opponent almost becomes irrelevant.”
“We shot ourselves in the foot a little bit, but I was pleased with the performance for the majority of the game.”
“We’ll approach them like every other opponent,”he said.
Shane Stefanutto, Matt Smith and Milan Susak were not involved in Brisbane’s light training run on Friday morning, but Postecoglou says this was merely a precautionary measure and all three would be available on Saturday night.
