Football Australia’s top technical advisor has taken aim at critics of Graham Arnold and the Socceroos’ style of play, saying the coach should be better appreciated for extracting what he has from the limited talent pool available to him.

Arnold will on Thursday name a 25-player squad for Australia’s upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Lebanon – their first matches since their heartbreaking exit from the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup, when they surrendered a one-goal lead deep in injury time to lose 2-1 to South Korea and their superstar captain Son Heung-min.

While that game was comfortably the Socceroos’ best performance at the tournament, Arnold bristled at earlier questions about their group-stage displays after struggling to break down teams that packed numbers into their defensive box – an echo of the same criticisms he faced for his coaching at the 2019 Asian Cup, when they also crashed out in the quarter-finals, as well as during the fraught qualification campaign for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Question marks about the team’s lack of creativity in attack will be partly addressed by the welcome return of Ajdin Hrustic, who was not selected for the Asian Cup due to his lack of game time at Italian Serie A side Hellas Verona. Hrustic, 27, has not played for Australia in almost a year but has steered his club career back on track after last month joining Dutch relegation battlers Heracles Almelo, where he has become a regular starter.

Meanwhile, two of Arnold’s regular starters, left-back Aziz Behich (injury) and midfielder Aiden O’Neill (suspension), will miss out on this window, in which the Socceroos will face Lebanon in Sydney next Thursday night and then in Canberra the following Tuesday. Two wins would book Australia’s place in the next round of World Cup qualification, where the top two teams in their group will go directly to the 2026 tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Unlike predecessor Ange Postecoglou, who has a much more dogmatic approach towards attacking football, Arnold has long maintained the Socceroos’ style of play is almost entirely dependent on the qualities and attributes of the players who are eligible for selection – and it is here where Ernie Merrick, Football Australia’s chief football officer, believes Arnold is actually being “let down” by the system.

A former A-League championship winner with Melbourne Victory and an old coaching rival of Arnold, Merrick was appointed to the key technical role in mid-2022, partly to address concerns regarding Australia’s overall footballing direction and player development pathways after the Socceroos’ failure to secure direct qualification to the World Cup and the Matildas’ quarter-final capitulation at the last Asian Cup.

“I think Graham Arnold has done a marvellous job considering the quality of players we have,” Merrick told this masthead.