Hopkins wants more consistent Victory

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Melbourne Victory head coach Jeff Hopkins wants to see his team become more consistent after it fell to a 3-2 loss to Adelaide United.

Victory suffered a second straight defeat in the Westfield W-League on Friday despite dominating long periods at Marden Sports Complex.

It found itself 3-0 down to goals from Veronica Latsko, Michelle Heyman and Emily Condon before a late push saw Victory strike through Ella Mastrantonio and Laura Alleway.

Hopkins, whose team was unbeaten through its opening five games, said there was too big a difference between his side’s best and worst.

“A lot of the things we did are just not good enough for us, although I thought at times we dominated periods of the game,” he said.

“Our execution of our general skills and decision making just wasn’t good enough in a number of areas of the field.

“It was most probably too big a gap between our best and our worst. We lacked consistency for the whole of the game.”

Victory could perhaps have had a first-half penalty after Natasha Dowie appeared to be fouled in the area, but the appeals were waved away.

Hopkins hopes to see Victory respond when it hosts Perth Glory in a top-of-the-table clash at AAMI Park on Friday, December 28.

“There was some really good stuff, but there was some really poor stuff as well,” he said.

“The gap between our best and our worst is quite hard to accept for me, but also for the rest of the group as well. It’s hard to understand how it can be like that.

“The good thing about this group is we’ll roll up our sleeves and work our way through it, but that’s two weeks now where we’ve been well below par and we can’t afford this to go on any longer.”