Newcastle Jets head coach Gary van Egmond has spoken about his plans for the Club for the 2012/13 A-League season.
In an exclusive interview with newcastlejets.com.au, Jets head coach Gary van Egmond has addressed everything from his player recruitment plans to the style of play he hopes to implement with the Jets during the 2012/13 A-League season.
Q: Now that every Club has confirmed who their head coach will be for the 2012/13 season, does it give you a bit of an idea of the different styles of football teams will play?
GVE: It probably gives us a little more certainty about different teams will structure their squads around the type of philosophy their coach will bring.
At Melbourne Heart John Aloisi is probably going to be a similar version of John van-t Schip who has obviously been the mentor. That gives you an idea of what you would expect from there and the type of players they-re going to recruit.
Sydney FC have appointed Ian Crook who I-ve known for a long, long time. I-m a good mate of his and he-s probably changed as a coach in the last 10 or 12 years, as we all have.
I think you-ll find a different type of Sydney and you-ve already seen there are a number of players he-s let go, so you know the type of players he is going to look to recruit and the type of game he-s going to play.
Another one is Rado Vidosic at Brisbane Roar. With the influence he-s had from Ange Postecoglou I can-t imagine them wanting to tinker with that too much given the success that they-ve had.
It does give you a bit of an overall indication from the coaching positions what style of play teams are going to use.
Q: What else can we expect as far as the Jets- own player recruitment goes?
We-re pretty well done. We-ve made a number of significant signings recently and we-ve got maybe five spots all up that we-re going to look for and that will include a mixture of older ones and maybe one or two young ones still to come in.
It could also be dependent on the fact that West Sydney has come in. There are opportunities there perhaps for some of our contracted players who might feel they would like to give that Club a crack, maybe because they-re from that part of the world.
There could be opportunities for some of those players to leave us, but again that-s probably a little bit further down the track.
Q: How important are those remaining positions on the playing roster, particularly given you have two foreign spots available?
GVE: Very important, especially in that front third. We really need to get people with a point of difference in that front third.
We need people with a little bit more experience than some of the younger ones we-ve signed.
We need to have them complement the young ones if you like and it-s important that we get those two positions right.
Q: What style of play can we expect to see from the Jets during the 2012/13 season?
GVE: We-re going to continue with the style of play that we-ve been trying to implement here as far as pressing high and looking to play a possession-based game.
Again, it comes down to the details of working on the players in the front third, middle third and playing out from the back. It-s also about getting them to understand when they press, how they press and what positions they have to get into at certain stages and other little details.
The type of players that we-re bringing to the squad we feel will enable us to become more proficient in those areas.
Q: How beneficial is it going to be for you to have a full pre-season with this group of players, as opposed to last year when you came in and the pre-season was already finished?
GVE: A lot more work can be done – even this morning I was able to go out and work on a technical basis with some of the younger ones.
I-ll have the opportunity to work with them more and implement what I want more and more.
During the season it becomes a little bit harder to do that because of the time factor, and there-s certain other things you have to take into consideration as far as their conditioning is concerned and things like that.
During pre-season you have more time to give yourself that base to build on. Overall, we-re in pretty good shape and I-m looking forward to getting started next Monday.
Thanks for your time Gary and best of luck this year.
