Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins shared his thoughts following Saturday afternoon’s 2-0 defeat to Sydney FC.
On the performance…
“I think in terms of the game, looking at the first half especially, we didn’t deal very well with pace out wide.”
“We had opportunities to close them down a little bit earlier, which we didn’t do.”
“I blame myself a little bit there (for the tactics), it opened us up to some real quick transitions and credit to Sydney they did transition very quickly”
“We changed things at half-time, tried to close it up and I think we did that quite well. But by that point we were 2-0 down.”
“The positive note is that we did make some changes at half-time and we changed the complexion of the game, although we didn’t really threaten that seriously.”
“I thought we played and defended with more intensity (in the second half).”
On the goals conceded…
“Very disappointed with the two goals.”
“They came from us giving the ball away and not dealing with their players well enough.”
On the tactical set-up…
“We put two sixes in there to protect the middle of the pitch.”
“But we also spoke about, when we get in possession, it would still allow KK [Elise Kellond-Knight] to drop out into the pocket to get the ball, and if we did then lose possession we still had somebody in there to stop the quick transition.”
“It was just the speed of the transition which was hurting us.”
On the midfield partnership between Elise Kellond-Knight and Alex Chidiac…
“Fantastic.”
“We have two great players. Two players that are super talented.”
“As time goes on, they will start to click and to gel, the chemistry will come and get better and better.”
On the need for improvement…
“Where we need to really improve now is that front third.”
“More penetration, more forward runs, create more chances.”
On Catherine Zimmerman’s injury…
“We don’t know yet exactly what has happened.”
“It is an ankle injury.”
“She has headed off to the hospital.”
“The follow through from the challenge is I think what did the damage.”
On the outlook following the game…
“Disappointed with the result, but there were a lot of positives to take out of the game.”
“There is a lot to do, but a lot to build on as well.”
“The girls mentioned the intensity of the game in the second half was more where we should be – we need to be training at a higher intensity, pushing ourselves a bit harder, which is being led by the players.”
“We are in a good state building from the back and in the middle third. I just think we need to get some work done and get some better strategies around how we break teams down, how we create chances.”
“We are not too far away from winning our first game, and then going on a run which can get us up into finals contention.”
