Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins was pleased with his side’s performance in a 1-0 win over the Western Sydney Wanderers.
Victory returned to third on the table and extended its unbeaten run to five games after Annalie Longo scored just before half-time at AAMI Park on Thursday.
Hopkins liked what he saw from his team, which was in control for the most part against the Wanderers.
“I was pretty pleased with a lot of things,” he said.
“We played some really good football first half, I think we were in charge of the game for most of the time, but probably our final pass, our finishing, our decision making on either the execution of the final pass or the choice of the final pass let us down a little bit.
“In general we were on top in the game, I thought in terms of when we were going forward as well I thought our rest defence was much better this week, we didn’t let them break too much on us and when they did I thought our two central defenders did a great job in keeping their strikers quiet. I was pretty pleased with a number of things.
“We just need to work on finishing teams off a little bit better than we did so we’re not as frantic in the last 10 minutes of the game where the game is still up for grabs when really I thought a second goal would’ve killed the game off, would’ve made things a little bit more comfortable for us.
“But credit to them, they’ve got a good team unit, they never gave up and the players they brought on made a difference and gave them energy and at 1-0 the game was still in the balance, although I never felt really threatened, you never really know that so credit to them for going right to the last minute.”
Victory has collected 13 points of a possible 15 heading into its final three games of the season.
Hopkins has been pleased with his side’s run as it aims to make the Finals Series for the third straight campaign.
“Really pleased. We talked about after the game next week we need to maybe sit down as a group and re-evaluate where we are,” he said.
“I think we’ll get a truer picture of where we are in the league and then we’ll have to really look at things and say, ‘Right, where do we want to go, what do we want to get out of it’ and reset our goals and move on from there then.”
