Kangaroos coach Dean Laidley has re-iterated his preference to remain at the AFL club beyond this year.

In the final year of his contract, all negotiations between Laidley and the club have been deferred until the end of the season.

He said he wants to stay at Arden Street, citing the work that's gone into younger players and wanting to see the fruits of that labour.

"I've made it quite clear going back eight or nine weeks ago that in a perfect world I want to coach the Kangaroos," Laidley said.

"And particularly I want to coach this playing group because we've worked very, very hard together."

However, those comments came with a big caveat.

"But sometimes it's not a perfect world," he said.

He later added: "We don't know what's going to happen but, having said that, I'm really happy with where I'm at, where the playing group's at, where the club's at and apart from that we're not going to get involved in talking about what we're doing, you know, internally."

Laidley has guided the club to outright second place on the ladder with four rounds to go, on the back of a punishing pre-season campaign and a revamped, more attacking game plan.

He has also coped with the pre-season losses of key-position players Nathan Thompson and Jonathan Hay.

Laidley said it was not so much this season's success that fuelled his ambition to stay but more the reward of seeing some players develop.

"You enjoy working with a young group. We've put a hell of a lot of time into some of these guys, five years worth of work, some two years," Laidley said, referring to the likes of Andrew Swallow, Jesse Smith, Hamish McIntosh, Daniel Pratt and Michael Firrito.

The Kangaroos face West Coast at Telstra Dome this weekend looking to end a four-game losing run against the defending premiers.

Since Laidley became coach in 2003 the Kangaroos boast only one win from six matches against the Eagles.

"West Coast are a very, very good football side, but it's more about how we go about it this week," Laidley said.

"We have been close a few times and we seem to match up pretty well but in the end they've got us.

"Is that a physical thing? Is it a mental thing? I'm not too sure."

Laidley said Glenn Archer was certain to return after the veteran was a late withdrawal in last week's loss to the Brisbane Lions.

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