Melbourne Victory is looking to bounce back in the Westfield W-League when it makes the trip to Adelaide United on Friday.
Summary
Victory has suffered back-to-back defeats since its 6-0 Melbourne Derby win, including falling to Brisbane Roar by the same scoreline last time out.
It is aiming to respond when it faces Adelaide at Marden Sports Complex in its fifth Westfield W-League game of the season.
Victory was again without star forward Lisa De Vanna for the trip to Queensland due to a hamstring injury.
Melina Ayres came closest to scoring for Victory against Brisbane, hitting the crossbar in the second half.
Victory did see two players make their Westfield W-League debuts in the loss to the Roar.
Maja Markovski, 19, and Paige Zois, 17, both came off the bench in their first appearances in the league.
Victory faces an Adelaide side which has collected nine points from its opening four Westfield W-League games of the season.
Head coach Jeff Hopkins’ pre-match thoughts
on bouncing back…
“It’s been a good week. We’ve recovered well out of the game, obviously physically it was quite a tough game for us. We had a team meeting on Monday, cleared the air a little bit, had a look at the game and then we’ve worked on a couple of things, obviously our possession, keeping the ball and a real emphasis on that this week. We’ve had a couple of really good sessions so train again in the morning (Thursday) and heading off in the afternoon. I think as professional footballers when you have a bad result, it’s good just to get out there and put it right again as soon as possible and it’s good that we’re heading to Adelaide on Friday and we’re really looking forward to the game.”
on De Vanna and other injuries…
“We were lucky in that respect, we didn’t really pick up any fresh injuries. We’re hoping that Lisa is going to be close to being ready this week, I think there’s a few boxes she’s got to tick tomorrow at training but hoping she’ll be involved in some way, but we’ll just have to wait and see in the morning. We obviously really want her back in the side, but we’re not going to rush her back and put her in jeopardy for the long-term. We’re hoping that she can train tomorrow and she trains well, she did a lot in training this morning and if she comes through training tomorrow then she’ll be travelling with us for sure, which is a real good boost for us.”
on Adelaide…
“They’ve had a really good start. Obviously they’re pretty buoyant at the moment with a couple of really good results so their confidence is high. We look at the league table and kind of look at it and think you don’t know where it is in reality because I know a lot of us have played a number of teams. We’ve played four games, we’ve only played two teams, we’ve played Brisbane twice and City twice. We’ve had a really good look at them, they’re a side that is full of confidence, they’ve had a couple of really good results and obviously being at home they’ll be confident. There’s a number of areas we’ve got to watch and there’s a number of areas we’ve got to put right from the game, us in possession we’ve got to be much better, we’ve got to look after the ball a lot better, but I’m confident we’ll get a really good reply from our players on Friday night.”
Last time
Westfield W-League 2019/20 Round 10
Adelaide United 0-3 Melbourne Victory
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Marden Sports Complex, Adelaide
Victory opened the scoring through Natasha Dowie, who was set up by Amy Jackson.
It took until late on for Victory to seal its win as Rosie Sutton and Dowie struck.
As it stands
Match details
Adelaide United v Melbourne Victory
Marden Sports Complex, Adelaide
Friday, January 29, 2021
Kick-off: 7.05pm AEDT
