Graham Arnold is a difficult man to please. The Sydney FC coach might have been forgiven for revelling in the glory of winning the A-League title on Sunday night and perhaps allowing himself to relax and enjoy a rare moment of reflection on what has been a remarkable season.
Instead the 53-year-old, who became just the third coach to win the A-League title twice following his side’s dramatic penalty shootout win over Melbourne Victory, was already thinking of how to improve next season.
“The thing is, I’m never happy,” he admitted after Miloš Ninković had slotted the winning penalty to settle a breathless grand final at Allianz Stadium. “I’m happy that we’ve done everything but next year I have to raise the standard even more.
“Wherever I work every day I try to create high standards and standards that need to be reached. The question is how high those standards can be. I think we can go higher, we can get better.”
Given Sydney’s utter dominance over the course of the past eight months, during which they lost just once and won the Premiers’ Plate by a 17-point margin, Arnold’s pursuit of perfection should be ominous for the chasing pack.
And it’s instructive that the only blot on an otherwise blemish-free copybook this season – defeat to city rivals Western Sydney Wanderers in February that brought to an end a 19-match unbeaten run – still rankles with him.
“We have gone from round one to round 29 with one loss and that loss shouldn’t have happened, and we should be sitting here as the invincibles,” Arnold said.
With a similar winning margin in the league, by his own admission, unlikely to be repeated, going an entire season unbeaten may indeed be a more achievable goal for Arnold next season.
Given the culture he has installed at the club, the players he has at his disposal and the work ethic he shares with them, Arnold believes he is well set to get even better.
“The only stress I had, if any, today before the game was just that I wanted it so badly for the players, for what they’ve done this year,” he said. “They’re such a fantastic group of people that turn up every day with a fantastic attitude. There’s wonderful mateship within the group.
“The biggest thing for me has been building the culture and giving players everything. We have a chef that cooks the best meals for the boys and a fantastic training facility. Players will take unders to come to that culture.
“When players are cared for, looked after, and when players know they’re going to improve their game, fitness and performance, then in a salary cap system why would you take an extra $20,000 dollars to go over the other side of Australia when you’re not going to get that type of stuff from other clubs?”
His players will have a few days off before returning to training before they play the Olyroos and then Liverpool later this month. “I don’t want the boys to have eight weeks off so we’ll train on for another few weeks and they’ll have six weeks off in July,” Arnold said.
But the matter of new contracts is more pressing, and Arnold said there will be some announcements in the next week, most notably about Ninković, who indicated post-match that he would still be at Sydney come the start of next season.
Arnold, who has now joined Ernie Merrick and Ange Postecoglou as dual A-League champions – but stands alone as the only man to have won them with different clubs – also suggested the Johnny Warren medal winner would re-sign.
