Van’ t Schip saved stars Tim Cahill and Bruce Kamau until the second half and brought off Fernando Brandan and Bruno Fornaroli.

Nicolas Colazo who has only played two A-League games returned to play the final 15 minutes in the Wellington victory.

While the Dutchman admitted a partial reason was to do with their upcoming midweek FFA Cup Final against Sydney FC, he was happy with the ability to mix and match in his squad.

“We put a team on the pitch we knew and thought that could win, they showed it as well, especially the first half,” Van’t Schip said.

“We also knew we didn’t have players for the week coming to play 90 minutes every game, so you have to start and look at the best combination.

“Now it’s again looking forward to Wednesday and we’ll discuss and look at what’s going to be the best team to start, we know we have a strong bench, today we’ve proved it again.

“(At) 1-1 and we can put in Tim, Colazo, Kamau and that period also with the changes, we got in the 2-1, even Bruno was still on the pitch at that moment,

“Tim had an influence when he came on, I think that’s good it makes the team strong and every player knows maybe sometimes he will miss out.

“The next game he could be playing so they have to be prepared for every moment that’s going to be available for them.”

There were two penalties in the second half which van’t Schip believed were correctly awarded as Kosta Barbarouses was taken down by Ivan Franjic and Bruno Fornaroli was fouled by Marco Rossi.

The Dutchman was pleased with the win, but said City needed to be more clinical in the future or may not escape with all three points.

“We could have gone up 2-0 or 3-0 at half-time and it makes it a bit easier, but 1-0 is still risky score and we didn’t start that well in the second half,” he said.

“They came into the game and in the end they got a penalty and made it back in. I think we lost a bit of control we had in the first half playing really good football, being aggressive.

“There were glimpses in the second half and overall I think we deserved to win and we got a penalty ourselves with Bruno. It was important and a good win leading up to Wednesday.”