After winning their first two games in the final phase of World Cup qualifying the Socceroos have failed to get a victory in their next four matches.

It means Australia sit in third place in Group B, three points behind Saudi Arabia and Japan with four games to go.

After four draws in succession the road to Russia now sees the remaining qualifiers against UAE, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Thailand as must-win contests, but Kruse denied that nerves are starting to creep in.

“No, not really,” he said. “By no means are we down and out.

“It’s firmly in our own hands. We have to win the next two home games starting on Tuesday which is the most important game. We win that and everything turns around again.

“We’ve had the hardest part of the draw done playing four games away. We dominated Japan at home and we should’ve won that game. We dominated Iraq, we know at home we are really dominant.

"I’m sure with the next two games at home against the UAE and Saudi that if we take maximum points there, things will look very different.

“We know it’s going to be very difficult but I’m sure that we’ll be on fire come Tuesday.”

Kruse said the Socceroos struggles against the likes of Saudi Arabia, Japan, Thailand and Iraq in their last four qualifiers isn't based on only one reason.

“It’s a bit of everything,” he said.  “We’ve played the UAE and Saudi at their home grounds where it’s 45 degrees, where it’s not easy to play.

“I don’t know if you have had to run around in 45 degrees, but it’s not easy to run and to play for 90 minutes.

“We know what we did right and we know what we did wrong and we’ll try to rectify that. Obviously the last game was completely different conditions were we took away one point which is disappointing.”

During the Socceroos previous World Cup qualification campaign, Australia only confirmed their participation for Brazil 2014 until the final game and Kruse said these type of scenarios are nothing new.

“Last qualifying phase we were under pressure as well," he said. “We had to win two and draw the last one and one of them was in Japan and we managed to do that.

“I’ve been part of the qualifying campaign before and nothing is easy. The are no easy games in world football anymore.

 “If you look at teams in Europe they struggle to beat so called lesser nations as well. We had to also include the flying and playing in difficult conditions and we have to try and adapt.

“Hopefully we can get our home fans to support us in the next game and continue to play the football that our coaches want to play and we can get the positive result that we need.”