We should have an open mind when it comes to Graham Arnold as coach. I have my reservations about certain things that he does.

Like a lot of people it’s interesting to see after his success with Sydney how he will be able to mix it on an international basis. Has he got the smarts for it? Has he got the experience for it?

But at the same time he’s already been successful at a good level here. He’s played for Australia and he’s already had a short stint as national team coach.

He’s got a good solid squad. We are defending champions for the Asian Cup – what a great test. We are in a pretty good group that we can hopefully get out of without any problems. We can try out new things, we can be bold.

We can also say, ‘We’ve won an Asian Cup we’ve got the monkey off our back, we don’t have to play this Asian Cup necessarily to win it.

Although I tell you what? It would be pretty good to have two stars on your jumper, that is a good thing.

But I do think we can use this as an opportunity foremost to lead into a World Cup qualifying which is going to be a difficult thing in itself so it’s a perfect opportunity to see what Arnold can bring.

I am right behind him. I wish him nothing but the best for this January. I’ve always been right behind all our coaches.

Socceroos World Cup -  The Post-Mortem

At the risk of sound like a classical geek I have studied Latin. Post-mortem means to look at the body after death. People are going to say, ‘You can’t do a post-mortem, there hasn’t  been a death, the body is alive, the heart is beating. We haven’t had to put a screen around like a horse at a race track and shoot it.’  But we can do an examination.

People know that I’m a half glass full kind of guy. I’m not trying to sound positive for the sake of sounding positive but I do think at the World Cup, Australia did the very best with what we had.

Anyone who has followed football for a while has known that it wasn’t exactly the greatest personnel that we’ve had. In fact we’ve had personnel in previous World Cups campaigns when we didn’t qualify that had better players in them.

I’ve got nothing at all bad to say about the team. The team was sensational, it just exposes certain things that we all have different opinions about.

But it is pretty clear we need a striker. The stats don’t lie – we didn’t score from open play at all.  So therefore we can’t feed on any confidence.

If the only goals are coming from Mile Jedinak that’s not going to create confidence in Aaron Mooy to have a shot outside or for Tom Rogic to run at players all the time.  

I know Aaron Mooy was playing deeper than where he usually does but you think: Have a ping! Do what you do in the English Premier League, have a ping from 20 metres out. We needed him to do something like that.

I know that France started off with a different plan after they played us. We were one of the few teams to give them any type of problems.

We know that we can mix it with the big boys. It is just a matter of confidence. A couple of times when our players were running at other players, even Trent Sainsbury was running forward I thought why don’t we do that more often? Why don’t we back ourselves?

The Ange era

I wish I could understand what it’s like to manage a team of  World Cup players because it must be a different world. You’ve got all the different players from different clubs with different personalities, strengths and weaknesses. And you have to draw them all together and make them play as a group of 11.

That's a real mindf*ck. It’s a very, very hard thing to do.

We used to joke about it on the podcast. Why doesn’t Ernie Merrick coach Australia? And in all seriousness, do you think our results would have been that different had Ernie Merrick coached Australia at the World Cup?

We probably could have got one draw and that’s it. It’s not all that different.

But I like what Ange did, I like what he was building up. I don’t know why he left. I was shocked when he left. I haven’t spoken to him since.

We used to speak quite often but he is away and quite busy with his new team. We don’t know what happened behind the scenes. For all we know he needed support for his vision. Who knows how big and how long his vision was.

It could have been a very long term vision that required safeguards and guarantees from FFA to enable it to come to fruition and maybe that wasn’t forthcoming.

He’s a pretty tough and smart and stubborn guy and he thought I’m not going to do it my way and he thought I’m not going to hang around for this I’m going to go on my next challenge. He’s a strong willed person. But I thought he did remarkable things for the team.

You cannot question our determination and our never say die attitude. Even to the point of delusion. I reckon that is one of the great things about Australia. We’ve never set ourselves a ceiling of how high we could go.

That’s what I liked about Ange. Ange said c’mon guys we’ve got to dream not just competing at a World Cup – but winning a World Cup.

As told to Con Stamocostas