Tony Popovic is setting no limits on how much his Melbourne Victory side can improve after a 3-0 win over Brisbane Roar on Sunday.
A Kai Trewin own goal and strikes from Nick D’Agostino and Ben Folami saw Victory win the opening two games of an Isuzu UTE A-League season for the first time since 2006/07.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Head Coach Popovic discussed the win, his side’s growth and Chris Ikonomidis and Roderick Miranda’s niggles.
on the win…
“I liked the result, obviously. I thought we didn’t start too well, I think with the ball we were a little bit, I don’t know if we were a little bit anxious or nervous, we kept forcing the play. As the half developed, we started to get a little bit more cohesion in our play and then you could see it was improving and we scored, the first one was an own goal, I thought the second and third goals were fantastic goals by us.”
on another game together…
“It’s more time that these players spent together, in training and playing games and you could see it improved. We obviously want it to get better and we’ll keep working hard on trying to get it better each week and hopefully there’s more signs of improvement next week when we play Perth.”
on Ikonomidis…
“I don’t think for the cup (against Adelaide City on Wednesday). We’d like to see him train throughout the week and then make an assessment at the end of the week and a decision leading into the Perth match.”
on Roderick…
“Very similar to Chris. A little bit like Josh Brillante, picked up a niggle during the week which is happening a little bit I think for a lot of clubs, it certainly is for us early part of the season. We know he’s making good progress, as is Chris, but we’ll judge it day by day and if they’re available that’s great, if not we’ll have to wait another week.”
on team’s improvement…
“I don’t want to put a limit on that. We’ll keep pushing to improve every day and there’s no limit. Let’s see how far it takes us. At the moment it’s good we can see that we improved from last week to this week, we’ll work hard again to do the same in the FFA Cup and obviously against Perth at home, we’ll try and keep growing. No one gives you the points. It’s not easy and we’ll work very hard to try and continue on the run of improvement. If that happens then we feel we have a chance to win another game next week.”
