Ange Postecoglou wants to ‘lay down some markers’ as he takes the team for the first time in our pre-season clash against West Ham at the Optus Stadium, Perth on Tuesday (6pm local, 11am UK).
The full squad has been together for three days in Perth – Heung-Min Son the final player to join up, flying direct to Australia – with Ange’s coaching squad now putting pre-season plans into overdrive with our Premier League opener at Brentford now less than a month away.
It all starts against West Ham – who beat Perth Glory 6-3 here on Saturday – and in an interview with SPURPLAY, Ange was asked what he was looking for in our first action of the summer.
“We’ll look to lay down some markers in terms of how the team wants to be,” he told us at the WACA, our iconic training HQ in Perth. “We’ve had some emphasis on certain aspects of the kind of football we want to play.
“Some of the boys have been at it for a couple of weeks, some of the others only a few sessions, but we want to see that the information is getting there and for them to apply that in a game scenario.
“Hopefully we’ll see some indications of that because they’ve certainly been really receptive as a group about what we’re doing and hopefully we’ll see some elements of that get through, be injury free and get some match conditioning.”
The sheer intensity of the training sessions has caught the eye, and Ange added: “It’s something we’ve obviously focused on. It’s going to be part of our football. Pre-season is all about laying down foundations, also working on conditioning and the beauty of working at an intense level is that it does both, it’s who we’re going to be as a team but also helps us get the boys up to the kind of fitness levels we’re going to need. Again, the lads have embraced that aspect of it, and the coaches have been brilliant at driving it.”