Aloisi not giving up hope of finals

Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi has denied the loss of Fred and Jonatan Germano means his team cannot win in Brisbane on Sunday.

Heart are level with Wellington Phoenix on 27 points at the bottom of the A-League ladder but Aloisi has remained adamant throughout the week that his team can bridge the four-point gap to the top six with two games before the finals.

With captain Fred (quadriceps) and fellow midfielder Germano (hamstring) set to miss the trip to take on Brisbane Roar, Aloisi has four experienced players unavailable as Simon Colosimo is suspended and Patrick Gerhardt is on international duty.

But Heart’s boss remains convinced he has enough quality in his squad to win in Queensland.

“We still think that we have a good enough eleven to go out there and win,” Aloisi said.

“With two games to go we can still come home strong and win these two games and make the finals.”

To make the finals, Heart need to win in Brisbane and then away to Central Coast Mariners in the final round but having failed to claim victory outside Victoria since 2011, the odds are against them.

However Aloisi has argued he is happy to be playing the Roar.

“We’ve worked on the way Brisbane play a little bit today and we seem to match up really well against them,” Aloisi said.

“It suits us to play against Brisbane, so that gives us confidence to go up there and put in a good performance.”

Aloisi added that belief will be crucial if his players are to knock of Brisbane and then the Mariners in consecutive weeks.

“It’s really important,” Aloisi said.

“We don’t want to look back and say, ‘well we can finish last’ … we want to look back and say we’ve finished fifth, but it’s important that we get good results these last two games, that’s the most important thing,” Aloisi said.

“We still think that we can make finals and we still believe that we can go to Brisbane and win and I think that’s important that the players believe that.”