Wanderers flew from Perth following the 2-0 loss to Glory on Saturday night to China for Tuesday’s clash against an opponent boasting the services of Hulk and Oscar.

“The players are very strong mentally,” Popovic said.

“We won’t use fatigue as an excuse in our performance.

“If we do that we’re already giving an advantage to SIPG.

“We’re here to win the match, we’re not to think about how tired we are from the previous game.”

Shanghai won their first group stage game 1-0 away to Korean outfit FC Seoul last week and Popovic acknowledged their quality.

“As for our opponent, Shanghai SIPG, we watched them in the last match,” Popovic said.

“We can see they’re a very good team. We can see they’re a very aggressive team. They like to press and play forward.

“They have some very good players in the front third.

“We understand tomorrow night will be a difficult challenge but we’ve shown in the past, although our resources aren’t like the Asian teams, we’ve been good enough and we’ve won a Champions League with a lot of spirit, belief and togetherness.”