Victory boasts the highest attendances in the A-League since day one and have three Premierships/Championships and an FFA Cup in their trophy cabinet to back it up. Van’t Schip was at City (then Heart) in their inaugural season in 2010 and has seen the progression made in the past six years.

The Manchester City takeover, the City Football Academy and new signing Tim Cahill, who was unveiled last week looks to bring more attention on the club, but the Dutchman said silverware would speak louder.

“We’re looking at ourselves and we of course want to be the biggest and the best club, but we haven’t achieved anything yet, I think that’s our challenge,” Van’t Schip said.

“We don’t look back, we look forward, we respect every opponent and we also know that Victory is one of the most successful teams. For us it’s a great challenge to compete with that and get better.

“It makes it very good in this great city to have two teams competing for success and we’re looking forward.”

City lock horns with Brisbane Strikers in the Round of 16 FFA Cup on Wednesday night at Perry Park, Queensland.

The majority of City’s squad is healthy for the clash against The Strikers, but Van’t Schip ruled out Ivan Franjic with a virus and Corey Gameiro who is close to recovering from an ACL picked up in November.

City is awaiting for clearance from the FFA to determine whether Cahill will play against the Strikers, but van’t Schip deemed the Socceroos star as fit to play.

“He’s (Cahill) ready to play, just now it’s how long and what’s the best in the interest of us and Tim because he’s been out for a few weeks, he didn’t do much training and it’s just been the one week,” he said.

“He’s a fit boy and he’s taken very good care of his body during his career. But still, you need a bit of a build-up that’s what we’re going to look at.

“He’s going to be part of the squad and we’ll see how we can manage him to play.”

With upsets produced in the tournament, van’t Schip pointed out the exit of Central Coast Mariners and Adelaide United showed there was no room for complacency.

“Their (Strikers) moments of getting this kind of publicity and footage is not every day there. This opportunity doesn’t arise every year and it’s probably once in a lifetime for a lot of those players,” he said.

“It’s in every country where you have these kind of games which make it special and the FFA Cup is great, for us we just have to treat it as professional and serious game.

“We’re not taking one game easy and the players know that, we’ve seen also in the past, there are no easy games, the short history of the FFA Cup has shown that.

“It should be enough of a warning and we are going to prepare the game in the best possible way and that’s been very good in the last few weeks in training here and the last few days as well.”