Melbourne Victory utility Leigh Broxham says his team isn’t taking the slow start to the season lightly, but has also called for calm in the wake of last Saturday night’s 2-3 loss at the hands of Western United.
It was the first time in history that the club had lost after holding a 2-0 lead, something Broxham says the players are aware of and want to rectify.
“It was obviously a tough one to go two nil up and then lose the game – that hasn’t happened before for us,” said Broxham.
“It hasn’t been easy in review. The first few days after the match we’ve been feeling down about it, but that’s what happens and it’s a long season.
“We’ve got to work on what we need to do to pick ourselves up now. We have to be up and about again and ready to respond this week.”
Broxham isn’t interested in making excuses, and outside of a number of factors contributing to the club’s disappointing start to the season, the players know where improvements need to be made.
“I think we’ve started poorly in other years and we’ve been okay,” said Broxham.
“There’s been a couple of injuries that have disrupted that, but we don’t want to make any excuses. We’re professional players and we all know what we have to do.
“The manner of the goals we’ve conceded are very avoidable, so we know the little individual mistakes we’re making that we can get rid of.
“Being around the dressing rooms, everything is fine – everyone is okay, everyone is up and about and it’s a good group of guys.
“We need to accept what has happened, accept that it wasn’t good enough, and get back up because we have another game that we can send a message in.”
That game comes this Sunday against Wellington Phoenix, who currently sit winless at the bottom of the table from their four matches.
This weekend also marks Remembrance Round in the Hyundai A-League, and Broxham knows the team can embody the fighting spirit needed to get the season back on track.
“It’s all the cliché things but it’s the truth – we’ve lost a few games at home and it’s not good enough for the standard that we want to set,” said Broxham.
“It’s a fighting reaction. We need to show the fans that we care and go out there and win a game of football at home.
“We scored a couple of great goals on the weekend, so it’s about building on that and making sure that we rectify some of the mistakes that we made.
“We’ve been focusing on what happened [last week] and now we turn towards this week.
“It’s got to be some form of motivation – it’s a home game again, we want to send a clear message that we’re not mucking around and we are Melbourne Victory and want to be at the top end every year.
“You can only go so far with excuses I think – we need to start putting runs on the board and that’s what we’ll be looking to do.”
Melbourne Victory hosts Wellington Phoenix on Sunday, November 10 in the club’s first home fixture at AAMI Park for the 2019/20 season.
RSL Victoria will be present in the Victory Village pre-match raising money through the sale of poppies, while a commemorative ceremony will begin at 3:40pm before kick-off at 4:00pm.
