Midfielder Jackson Irvine has dismissed concerns about the Socceroos' scratchy start to the Asian Cup, adamant they are building strongly for the knockouts.
Australia will take on Indonesia on Sunday night in the round of 16 after topping group B with two wins and a draw (seven points).
But all three group performances against India, Syria and Uzbekistan involved struggles to break down deep-lying defences.
"We've encountered a lot of these deep blocks, back fives," Irvine told AAP.
"It's difficult. I face it a lot with my club (FC St Pauli) as well and you have to ask different questions, find different solutions, find different ways to score goals.
"Over the years we've been really good at finding those answers, whether it's been from set plays, making the most of transitional moments when the teams are more open.
"But we've worked a lot on trying to find those combinations and patterns in and around the final third, which can be difficult when teams play deep.
"As the tournament has gone on, I think we've shown more in each game.
"A lot of the boys individually have found their feet more as the tournament's gone on and we've shown with the changes that we've made that we've got capability to play in different ways with different players too."
Despite slipping to a draw against Uzbekistan, Irvine was upbeat.
"Overall the squad's confident and I definitely think we've all got the feeling that we are getting better - and that's what you want," he said.
"You don't want to reach your peak in the second game of the group stage, you want to continually get better and reach that maximum further down the line."
Japan's loss to Iraq and South Korea's draws against Jordan and Malaysia underlined the importance of Australia snapping up good results.
"You need to play your best all the time to win games on a consistent basis at this level because every team is capable of hurting every team," Irvine said.
"You want to look at the big picture and reflect and see that what we're doing is good, we're in a good place.
"Sometimes when you focus too much on yourself and the high standards that we expect, you cannot be too hard on yourself, but you can think 'oh, maybe we could have done this, we could have done that.'
"But when you take a step back and you look at conceding one goal, seven points, top of the group - I think a lot of teams would have bitten your hand off to have that at the end of this group stage."
