Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins hopes to see his team continue building after recording a third straight win on Saturday.
Kayla Morrison and Catherine Zimmerman scored as Victory recorded a 2-0 win over the Newcastle Jets to move into third on the Westfield W-League table.
Victory produced a professional performance to record its fourth win in seven games this season, with the Jets reduced to 10 players late on following Rhianna Pollicina’s red card.
Hopkins was satisfied with his side’s display and hopes its improvement can continue as it marked a milestone appearance for Amy Jackson, who equalled Gulcan Koca’s club record for most games in the Westfield W-League with 66, with a win.
“There was some good stuff, especially in the first half, but we just needed to be a little bit more consistent, even a little bit more confident in the way that we combined,” he said.
“I think when we got the ball down and we played and we played three or four simple passes and then set the ball up and played the next ball through it was so much better. At times we have a tendency to hurry, to try and penetrate the lines of our opponents. I thought when we did things really well today we kept the ball for two or three times and we got our heads up and we actually looked for the correct moment to penetrate.
“When we did that we played some really good football but we’ve just got to keep working on that, just making sure that we recognise the moments. I think that’s where the big improvements can be.
“It’s great that we’ve won three games now but we’re still saying that we haven’t hit anywhere near our best, hoping again next week and the week after and the week after that we can keep improving and hopefully then coming into the last couple of games of the season, hopefully then we’ll be in a position to make the finals and we can roll into the finals in some real good form and that’s what we’re hoping, that’s what our aims are.”
Victory has recorded three straight wins, beating Adelaide United and then overcoming the Jets twice, while keeping two clean sheets.
Hopkins said there were already areas he had seen growth in across those three games.
“We’ve addressed certain things every week and this week we did talk about if we were going to win the game that we would have to manage the game well, that we would have to be quite disciplined in the way that we went about the game,” he said.
“I thought in the last 15, 20 minutes although they were really trying to get back in the game, I thought we were quite comfortable, we kept the ball quite well, we kept the ball away from them and we didn’t really look like we were going to concede.
“If we go back two games to the Adelaide game where we were 1-0 up we were quite frantic in the last 10 minutes of the game, whereas today we were a lot more comfortable in possession and we kept the ball away from them. From that side of things I thought that was quite pleasing.”
