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Ammon News - With their seventh consecutive victory in the bag, Australia head coach Graham Arnold is aiming for a perfect finish in their Asian Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asian Cup China 2023 campaign, following their 3-0 win over 10-man Nepal on Friday.

The Socceroos led from start to finish with goals from Mathew Leckie, Fran Karacic and Martin Boyle to seal top spot in Group B with 21 points from seven matches to book their place in the final round of the Asian Qualifiers and confirm their seat to the AFC Asian Cup China 2023 Finals.

Having already secured progression to the next stage of the Asian Qualifiers, Arnold tinkered with his starting line-up and was happy with the outcome with Australia having 12 shots on target.

“We made another nine changes tonight and I’m very happy we controlled the game,” said Arnold. “But the most pleasing aspect was the amount of chances we created.

“You have to give credit to Nepal, they fought and fought and didn’t stop running but overall we came here to do a job and we are not finished yet. We played seven games, 21 points and we’re striving to finish the campaign with eight wins."

Despite another milestone for Australia in achieving seven consecutive wins in 24 years, Arnold refused to get carried away and remained focused on their final group match against Jordan on Tuesday.

“For now, we will go through the recovery process before shifting focus on our next match (against Jordan). We will treat that as a final with our best players forward because we want to win and bring joy to our fans.

“Full respect to Nepal especially to their head coach Abdullah Al Mutairi, who fielded a very young team and they played very well. He (Al Mutairi) made some big changes to the team and they didn't make things easy for us. They are a good side and can only get better.”

Nepal head coach Abdullah Al Mutairi was proud of his team’s performance and commended their fighting spirit against an experienced Australian side as the South Asians ended their campaign in fourth with six points.

“I would like to thank my players for their performance today, they were heroes tonight,” said Al Mutairi. “It was a tough match and we played with 10 players in the second half.

“We conceded an early goal and that threw our concentration a little bit but we tried to fight back and the players gave their best as they’ve promised to Nepal fans."

“We fought hard on the field and we tried to play on the counter attacks with the opportunities that we had but Australia were physically stronger than us and we did our best to match them.

“We are Gorkhalis and we showed what we can do today. The players fought till the end and we need to develop and improve as a team moving forward.”

*afc