Melbourne Heart coach John van ‘t Schip is adamant his new team are on the path to success and he won’t be making any radical changes to either his personnel or his approach as they search for their first win against Adelaide at Hindmarsh Stadium on Friday night.
Heart have managed just one point from their opening two games and that was a fortunate one against Newcastle last week thanks to a Ben Kantarovski own goal.
Van ‘t Schip has a distinct possession-style game plan he is looking to implement among his newly-assembled squad and admits that it will take time to get all his players on the same page.
He sees the only path to development is consistency in both the eleven players he puts on the park and the style of play they bring to the game and will persist with what he believes is a winning plan.
“It’s a combination of things, it’s not that it’s up front, it’s not that it’s not functioning at the back, it’s more that it’s becoming a team, to work to understand each other,” he said.
“Those things, we are just learning from each other know and the mechanism of that has just started that will have to settle and jel in the coming games we have to play.”
“That’s why normally I won’t change that much, because that won’t help the team a lot. Maybe if a player deserves a chance and someone maybe needs a rest, that’s up to me, but otherwise, there will not be a lot of changes.”
He has backed those words up by making just one change to his squad for the Adelaide game, with Josip Skoko ruled out through injury and Jason Hoffman and Aziz Behich promoted into an extended squad.
There have been suggestions that van ‘t Schip insistence on such a rigid game plan has negated any element of surprise that Heart may have had in their opening few matches.
But the Dutchman is happy to lay his cards on the table and if teams want to change their game plan because of that, it would be to their detriment.
“I don’t care because I don’t hide things. Everyone knows where I come from, where I grew up, what kind of game I used to play. I think it’s only good for us, what we need to stand up against,” he said.
“We have to deal with that approach. Every team won’t adjust and sit in. There will be a lot of teams that will attack as well, then it’s up to us to have a good defence.”
“All those things together. I believe if you are stronger. It doesn’t matter what you say. If your tactic is to play ball possession, and create things, that’s the way you have to play. That’s what we are doing.”
