The departure of Golden Boot winner Marc Janko – who scored of almost a third of Sydney FC's goals last season – looms an enormous hole, but the man set to take his starting role, Shane Smeltz, couldn't be less worried.
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Smeltz, 34, who scored eight goals last season to take his A-League career tally to 85, was largely used off the bench or when Janko was unavailable.
But rather than directly replace the Austrian marksman, Sydney FC coach Graham Arnold has invested in attacking midfielders – namely Filip Holosko, Milos Ninkovic and Andrew Hoole (away on Olyroos duty) – leaving Smeltz alone up front with Matt Simon as his back-up.
Despite the club accumulating the third-highest number of goals recorded in an A-League year last season, Smeltz is convinced the Sky Blues now have "unbelievable players who can create and score".
"We've got players in midfield who can play up front and who can play in two or three positions. We've got a lot of variety. We can change things whenever we need to and it's a real positive for us," he said at the club's final training session on Friday. "Marc was fantastic for us last season but he hasn't been with us for eight months now and we've been preparing without him, that's for sure.
"We haven't been thinking about Marc. We go into the season hoping to do well, expecting to do well and I'm sure we will."
What they have been thinking about, however, is last season's grand final defeat. Smeltz admits the 3-0 hammering at the hands of Melbourne Victory has provided all the fuel they needed to get better over winter. "It's a big motivation for the season. We've got boys in the rooms that have already said it's a reason why they stayed at the club," he said. "That tells you, it definitely hurts."
Claiming he's had a "very good pre-season", Smeltz is racing the clock to be the first player in A-League history to reach 100 goals, with the all-time leader, Archie Thompson, injured and stranded on 89 goals. "At some point that would be nice," Smeltz said. "But I'm not focusing on that. We're focusing in on this weekend and we're hungry for that. We can't focus on 10 weeks down the track or towards the end of the season."
The New Zealand international said while much had been spoken about what the Sky Blues were capable of, it was now up to him and his teammates to deliver the goods.
"It's been a long time coming, we've been preparing for three months so we're definitely ready. There's a lot of boys in there just itching to get out there," he said. "We've had enough of talking about how we feel, how we're going to do. We just want to play now."
