Babbel shocked many at yesterday’s Sydney derby press conference when he hailed Sydney FC as favourites while calling Wanderers "the worst team in the league".

Despite the season just starting, pundits have written Western Sydney off as title contenders, pointing to a lack of big name recruits and the team failing to gel during pre-season.

The knives were sharpened even further when the Wanderers laboured to an unimpressive 1-1 draw against Perth Glory in the opening round of the A-League.

One of Western Sydney's new recruits Bruce Kamau told FTBL that hearing his coach slam his side was hard to take.

“From my standpoint it’s obviously not a good thing to hear about your team,” he said.

“But we obviously know that we have quality in our squad and we definitely think that we are a good team and can do a lot this season.

“In some regard, [the comments] take that pressure off performing because everyone is expecting us not to do well.

“But then again, it makes you want to go out on the pitch and show people who think that way exactly how good a team we are and exactly what we can do.”

Kamau believes Babbel wasn’t writing off his team but was reacting to some media criticism associated with the Wanderers’ early season form.

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” he said. “That’s our motivation for myself and the team, to prove anyone else wrong who doubts us and what we can do.

“For those kinds of comments to come out, you can take them either way. Accept it – or you can use it to prove the person or people wrong... and we are going to do the latter.”

Western Sydney have won just one of the last 13 Sydney derbies with the most recent meeting being a 3-0 loss in the FFA Cup semi-final

Ahead of this weekend’s blockbuster, Kamau denied Wanderers were low on confidence heading into Saturday night’s game at the SCG.

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “In the semi-final we were a bit unlucky.

“We played some very good football and we were the better team for the majority of the game, but we obviously didn’t take our chances as well as Sydney did and that’s what cost us in the end.

“We definitely aren’t going into this game low on confidence or doubting ourselves. We are still going in there thinking that we can win this game.

“As long as we execute what we can on the pitch and follow our structure and our game plan then I don’t see any reason at all why we shouldn’t come out with the win.”