Wellington is missing Kosta Barbarouses, Michael McGlinchey, Louis Fenton and captain Andrew Durante due to international duty with New Zealand in friendlies against Mexico and United States in the coming days.

Van ’t Schip scoffed at the idea Wellington were weakened as a result and believed City needed to get off to a good start for a successful season.

“Everyone is talking about how they’re missing a lot of players, they miss players, but if you look at their line-up, it’s still a very strong line-up,” Van’t Schip said.

“It’s not that they’re playing with the youth team, no, they’re playing with Hamish Watson, Roy Krishna, Gui Finkler, Roly Bonevacia, Vince Lia, Dylan Fox and they have Tom Doyle and Marco Rossi.

“I don’t think that’s a bad line-up, it’s a very experienced and strong line-up with Mossy (Glen Moss) in goal.

“Maybe their depth is a bit less than normal, but Durante is important in organising, but other than that it’s a strong line-up.

“All the talk, we don’t buy into it because it’s not the truth.”

At the beginning of last season, van ’t Schip’s team was plagued with injuries, but now the squad is almost up to a clean bill of health with just Corey Gameiro out with an ACL injury and Ivan Franjic to return in the coming weeks.

Tim Cahill is out due to Socceroos duty while van ’t Schip was uncertain whether new third marquee signing Nicolas Colazo could maintain a full game after making his debut against Western Sydney Wanderers in the FFA Cup quarter-final a fortnight ago.

Van ’t Schip also conceded silverware in the domestic cup and league was needed to back-up the progress made off the pitch.

The Dutchman has formulated a versatile squad with players capable of playing a variety of positions, however he said it was just for precautions and wanted to keep game plans as consistent as possible.

“We want to play in a certain way, we don’t want to switch from one system to another system, it’s not our goal,” he said.

“In our system we can maybe adjust a few things that looks different. In the end it’s not much of a change, so going from a 5-3-2 or a 4-4-2 or whatever, it’s not really our goal.

“We want to play in a certain way, improve that and get better at that and in the end we want it to result in winning something, but it’s about improving your style every day, every week and getting better.

“That should be the end result in winning in something and not because you’re not doing something good and you have to change your system every time, maybe when you have some injuries, but that’s not the goal.”