Asked how far he felt he was off his best, the Socceroo great shot back at the journalist asking the question.

“I don’t know, you guys seem to have a pretty good idea about that, so I’ll let youse comment on that,” he said.

When pressed on if he should be a starter in the Socceroos later this month, Kewell turned the question around and challenged the journalist to give his opinion on the former Leeds star’s form.

“It’s up to Holger, you have to ask him that. Why don’t you think?' he asked.

“My thoughts are like any other player’s [thoughts]. If you play, you play. Again, if you’re seeing something different maybe you should be speaking to Holger.”

The journalist pressed him again on that question with Kewell turning the question around: “Again, what do you think?”

The journalist responded by saying, “Well possibly not at the moment.”

“OK, that’s your opinion and you’re allowed that,” replied Kewell.

The journo pressed Kewell for a third time and a clearly agitated Kewell responded with: “Well, I just told you my opinion” before media minders asked the questions move on.

The questions did move on but Kewell was in no mood for niceties. He also hit back at questions about him having a restricted pre-season. “Restricted to what?” he shot back.

“Before I came here I had eight weeks of personal training. And in a team sometimes you can shy away and not  be at the front. In personal training, you are consistently getting watched over.

“I believe my fitness is good. Yes, I have to work on my sharpness but that will come,” Kewell said.

Kewell hasn't scored this season in four games but  has been influential in most of the games.

“The focus is on me week in week out and I knew that when I signed," he added.

"And the challenge for is to do that [play well] week in week out. I’m not going to shy away from it. Yes I know I need to crack up on  a few things and I’ll do that.

“I’m the first person to know if I’ve played bad or not. I do look in the mirror and I see myself and if I can’t look myself in the eye then there’s no point in writing about it.

“I already know I had a bad game.”

Turning to tomorrow night's blockbuster and talk about Victory potentially having to change their game to blunt the champions gameplan was given short shrift by the 33-year-old former Galatasary and Liverpool star.

Victory have clearly worked very hard this week with a plan to stop Roar’s speed and movement though Kewell wasn’t keen on too much focus on Roar.

“I play my own game. I play my own game," he said. "The times you try to play other people’s games you’re not concentrating on your own game."

He added: “We still know we can improve. We’re gonna strive to perform, we started on the wrong foot but we’re slowly putting that right and looking forward to this weekend’s games.”