Our starting front four for the Peru game have clocked up a total of 201 games between them. They have scored IN TOTAL 28 goals for the Socceroos. That’s less than one every seven games between them all.

None of them even has nine goals for the Socceroos in now-lengthy national team careers.

And yet there we were last night, putting our trust in them all once again to somehow get us over the line.

It’s a problem that should have been addressed a long time ago, but it’s one that Bert van Marwijk could still have challenged in part during this campaign.

Early in his brief Socceroos stint, he laid out his stall for a 4-1-1–3-1 formation that relied on a target man, with Andrew Nabbout getting the nod.

But although he repaid the favour once in the warm up friendlies, he never looked seriously like repeating it in his five other games.

And the problem with the big strong target man is that it also requires the forwards around him being able to finish from the second ball, if the striker is unable to do the business himself.

Robbie Kruse has five goals from 67 matches. Mathew Leckie, who is without doubt worth his starting spot, still has just eight goals from 56 caps.

Tom Rogic who orchestrated so much against Denmark and Peru, also has a meagre seven goals from 40 games.

These are not players pouncing on the second ball from a target man and putting it away on a regular basis.

In which case, you need the striker to do the finishing too – but Tomi Juric himself has just eight goals from 38 appearances. Yes, he was key in the Asian Cup campaign, but that was more than three years ago.

So the lack of goals is no surprise – yet here we are.

It seems obvious that the answer is to try something new. Ange Postecoglou did, and changed the formation to a back three to create more chances for the attack. 

It succeeded in that aim – but we still didn't score any more, and as a result of weakening our defence, we gave away more goals.

It is not the formation or structure – Ange and Bert both showed we can set up goals…but we just can't score them.

As Bert said after the Peru game, we play well, we create chances, we play good football… and yet we don't win games, while worse teams do.

To an outsider at least, it seems clear that constantly repeating the same thing over and over again for the same result is pointless.

Tomi Juric is simply not working now in that role and Andrew Nabbout is just a like for like replacement, as we saw when Juric replaced Nabbout against Denmark to absolutely no effect whatsoever.

(That game, as critics have pointed out, was crying for a touch of Cahill magic…but ultimately it wouldn’t have mattered. Even if we had won, Denmark would still have had four points to our three and we still wouldn't have made the last 16.)

But it is baffling to continually see us overlooking a natural born goalscorer like Jamie Maclaren, a player who scored more than any other Australian in an A-League season…then repeated it the following season. 

He was in fine form overseas for Hibs but despite being a late call-up, never got a look in.

It could quite simply be that he is not the answer. He may not be able to step up to world class level. 

But to play him on an extended run in that role is not going to hurt us – even if he never scores – because he’s simply not denying a current proven goalscorer a starting  spot…

Overall, van Marwijk can look back with a certain degree of pride on his brief Australian role.

He tightened up the defence, in the way we all wanted Ange to do instead of quitting, and eventually brought teen wonderkid Daniel Arzani onto the world stage.

We performed well enough at the World Cup, certainly without disgracing ourselves at any stage – but equally without impressing anyone beyond being a competent but impotent side at this level.

But for incoming coach Graham Arnold there are a few big decisions to make ahead of the 2019 Asian Cup and its aftermath.

It’s fairly safe to say Cahill’s playing career is over - certainly, you would think, at international level and very possibly at club level too. He’s no longer an option for us (no matter what Fox Sports and the Daily Telegraph may say…)

There are a few question marks over others in the squad too. 

We could see more of Massimo Luongo playing in midfield with Trent Sainsbury taking on the armband full-time over Mile Jedinak, although probably not until after the Asian Cup

Likewise, while Robbie Kruse stepped up against Peru compared to his Denmark performance, but increasingly his place looks vulnerable to an ever fitter and ever more experienced Arzani, especially if the youngster moves overseas and settles in at a new European home.

Mark Milligan too may hang up his international boots after the Asian Cup – but Arnold could kickstart that process by playing Matthew Jurman more in that role, or looking for other alternatives.

Risdon and Behich look set to stay in the squad until better alternatives show up while Leckie, Rogic, Sainsbury, Mat Ryan and Aaron Mooy will remain the foundation for the future.

Which just leaves the striker’s role and the perennial headache for Australian coaches for years now, despite the false dawns of the Asian Cup and the first round of World Cup qualification.

Nabbout and Juric offer nothing new, Dimi Petratos failed to impress in training at Russia 2018 while the case for Maclaren is made at length above.

Beyond that though it’s hard to see where we look to next in the short-term. Adam Taggart is a possibility if he can maintain fitness and step up to the next level, but he’s not the young hope he was.

And that’s where thelong-term problem lies. There is no pathway for young strikers in Australia.

In the A-League, strikers are so pivotal to a team’s success, clubs will invest their marquee money and top salary cap wages on attracting overseas talent Down Under to deliver goals and finals spots.

It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no great Australian strikers in the A-League because there are no (or at least very few) Australian strikers in the A-League.

The Y-League is no pathway as it only provides a laughably short season. The AIS no longer exists and few A-League clubs look at the striking talent in NPL clubs (which is often admittedly made up of discarded former A-League and Y-League players).

So the issue is not Bert being stubborn, or team formations or structures. It’s not even personalities. It’s actual deep-rooted infrastructure.

A short-term fix might be to bring in Maclaren and adapting our playing style to suit his if that brings results.

But more importantly on a bigger scale, it is a series of fundamental problems with football’s infrastructure in Australia that need to be addressed.

Until we do, we simply cannot progress to the next level.