On the backs of a de­mor­al­is­ing 5-0 drub­bing by the hands of the Unit­ed States in their open­ing match of the Con­ca­caf Gold Cup, na­tion­al coach Dwight Yorke is ex­pect­ing a good re­ac­tion from his charges when they face Haiti at 6.45 pm Thurs­day at the Shell En­er­gy Sta­di­um in Hous­ton, Texas.

Yorke is brac­ing him­self for an ag­gres­sive Hait­ian out­fit, which he be­lieves would have to be met with equal ag­gres­sion. The Haitians, af­ter a 1-0 loss in their open­ing match to Sau­di Ara­bia, will be look­ing for max­i­mum points, the same po­si­tion the So­ca War­riors have found them­selves in af­ter the US de­feat.

Yorke, who spoke at the pre-game press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, told the me­dia, "I think be­tween both teams, a vic­to­ry for ei­ther team will set the tone in terms of putting ei­ther team in a good po­si­tion go­ing in­to the last game, and we look at it through the same lens. It's go­ing to be an ag­gres­sive game. I do not doubt that our re­search and our an­a­lysts have de­ter­mined what Haiti will bring. They play on the front foot, they are ag­gres­sive, they try to close you down from the very top when you play out from the back.

"They've got some very ath­let­ic play­ers on the wide ar­eas, they are very at­tack-mind­ed, and they can be cre­ative at times, so we have to be re­al­ly ag­gres­sive to keep them out. I felt we weren't ag­gres­sive, cer­tain­ly in the Amer­i­can game, as I would have liked us to be, but that's an area that we're work­ing on."

Ac­cord­ing to Yorke, it's about the at­ti­tude and men­tal­i­ty for him go­ing in­to the game, not­ing that once the will­ing­ness to win a foot­ball match is there, cou­pled with the goal-scor­ing abil­i­ty of Levi Gar­cia, he is con­fi­dent can pull off a good re­sult against Haiti.

Yorke led the coun­try to the World Cup in 2005, and who is at­tempt­ing to do so as coach this time around, told the me­dia that they are al­so work­ing on a de­fence that has let them down in the past, telling the me­dia that work has al­ready start­ed on repa­ra­tion work.

His team was a shad­ow of the team that de­feat­ed St Kitts and Nevis 6-2 in the World Cup on June 6 at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain, where they gave up three soft goals due to de­fen­sive blun­ders. Yorke told the me­dia that they are aware of their de­fen­sive is­sues.

"We're ful­ly aware of it, we're not blind to it. We know that there are ways to im­prove, and we've al­ready start­ed the process in try­ing to ad­dress that sit­u­a­tion. There is a lot of work in progress, and I am sure that by the World Cup qual­i­fiers, you'll find that this team will be ready and pre­pared for the bat­tle ahead be­cause that is the end goal.

"It's an area that we're kind of suf­fer­ing, those cen­tral ar­eas in de­fence, it's clear to every­one that we haven't got the num­bers. It's just four de­fend­ers we have that prob­a­bly need a bit more, and we have to ro­tate those play­ers, so we're try­ing to play a sys­tem that would ac­com­mo­date the play­ers to give us a good base to build on, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, it didn't work out the way we thought it would have against Amer­i­ca. But I am sure and con­fi­dent with the play­ers, it's a learn­ing curve for these play­ers, they've nev­er been in these sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances be­fore, so I kind of sym­pa­thise with them a lit­tle bit," Yorke ex­plained.