Valkanis spoke of Tim Cahill’s personal management during the week as he was selected for the upcoming Socceroos World Cup Qualifiers against Iran and UAE.

Cahill managed 57 minutes before being substituted for Fitzgerald and the Socceroos veteran looked mortified when he was taken off.

Valkanis indicated Ivan Franjic managed to find a lot of space and had involvement with Fornaroli’s second goal.

“It was always the plan in the second at some point to inject two speedy wingers who are fresh and it worked to a tee,” Valkanis said.

“Different strategy to the first half which I think worked OK. We didn’t quite execute it perfectly. I think if we played out wide to Ivan who was arriving perfectly in that space we wanted him at, we probably would have had more chances on goal.

“Instead we kept looking to play vertical passes in the midfield when it was opened wide. The first half was good and the goal came from this strategy as well, Tim finished it off perfectly as well.

“We thought we’d overload the midfield, play without one winger and extra midfielder. Timmy to stretch Newcastle’s big boys at the back, they did a good job of that.”

Valkanis was happy with the performance and labelled the clean sheet as extremely important for his team, conceding 33 goals this season in third place.

“(A clean sheet) was probably more important than scoring so many goals,” he joked.

“The boys have worked hard in the past few weeks, making sure they’ve got a lot of things right. They’ve worked hard and today was a very good and professional performance. We continue on, we need to find the momentum going into finals.”