A positive start to Brisbane Roar’s pre-season program has pleased Head Coach Ange Postecolgou, who has predicted strong competition across the board in the upcoming Hyundai A-League campaign.
Compared to this time last year, Postecoglou admits his squad is miles ahead but said he won-t allow complacency to creep in with more than three months to go until the start of the season.
The current Hyundai A-League Coach of the Year has been working his squad hard during the early months of the pre-season and has been happy with the response from his players both on the training field and in their recent pre-season games against local opposition, but said the hard work has just begun.
“In terms of tracking the players individually and more importantly, collectively as a team, we are at a much stronger place now than where we were 12 months ago,” Postecoglou said.
“I assume the competition will be stronger too so it doesn-t necessarily mean things will be easy for us.
“We have to keep improving and now is the period that we can take things up a notch.”
Australian representative duties have meant the Brisbane Roar coach has had to deal with minor disruptions throughout preparations up to this point but next week sees the return of the majority of the squad with the exception of new signing Kofi Danning who has been given a short break following his recent heavy schedule.
“It-s obviously an unusual pre-season for us but everything we wanted to have ticked off by now, we have,” he said.
“We-ve had some things we can-t control like national team commitments but coming back off this mini break we-re having, everyone bar Kofi will be available for us so we can start working on the group as a whole.”
Postecoglou backed his players to continue their improvement over the coming months which he said would be crucial momentum leading into the Hyundai A-League season.
“I think we-re ahead of where we were last year and we should be because we-ve really already had 12 months,” Postecoglou said.
“We-re definitely much more progressed and at a different level to where we were 12 months ago and the key is to take that into the season and make sure we improve our play once the regular season starts.”
