Aware of the importance of a win after losing 2-0 to Jordan last month, Postecoglou will insist on a “relentless” commitment to attack at Canberra’s GIO Stadium.
Expressing anger at the state of the pitch, and at a perceived questioning of his coaching record, Postecoglou was adamant that his side should not be judged solely on one defeat.
Australia will be without two key players in Matthew Spiranovic and Mathew Leckie, but Postecoglou insisted the strategy remained unchanged, no matter who the personnel were.
“The disappointing part of our last game was that our attacking intent wasn’t as aggressive as it should have been, we were a little bit conservative in the way we played,” Postecoglou said. “I think the utopia system people want us to play doesn’t exist.
“Every system has its frailties and fragile elements, but I believe the way we play our football has made us successful and we will continue to do it that way. I think I have been coaching long enough for people to know that I don’t react to one result and change things because things didn’t go well in one game.
“The attacking intent will always be there, whether we are at home or away, regardless of who we are playing against, regardless of the competition we are in. If anything in Jordan, instead of being aggressive we took our foot off the pedal and tried to control the game in a different way. When you do that the opposition can take advantage.
The idea is you try to be relentless in your approach and we didn’t. We should have gone harder — in every game where we’ve done that, we’ve either been successful or at least given good account of ourselves.”
Warming to his theme, Postecoglou shook his head at suggestions his team selection in the loss to Jordan had been unbalanced.
“It’s my 20th year of coaching and how many times do you think I’ve been asked that?” he said. “People expecting me to change now are going to be terminally disappointed. I’m not trying to prove a point, it’s just how I think we should play our football.
“When we scored the winner in extra time in the Asian Cup final, and our leftback is the furthest man up the park, no one said we were too attacking then. It works, it’s successful. I’ve won titles at club level and international level, and it seems I still have to convince people I know what I’m doing. Such is my lot in life.
By the time of kick off the stadium pitch is forecast to have soaked up some 36 hours of rain — threadbare even before the downpour, it brought condemnation from the Socceroos coach.
“I wasn’t rapt to see it to be honest but we will deal with it,” he said. “We had a fantastic pitch in Perth (against Bangladesh) and it certainly helped us. We get shocking pitches away from home but we don’t control that.
“I’m kind of hoping we are maturing as a nation to know that the old argument that it is the same for both teams isn’t really the case. When we play at home, we should play to our conditions and to suit our style of game and that means having a good pitch.”
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