Hopkins believes the key reason is due to the inexperience of the squad, after taking over from former coach Dave Edmondson who endured a difficult 2015/16 season claiming the wooden spoon.

Victory have conceded seven goals in the first two weeks after a 3-3 away draw to Adelaide United and a 4-0 loss yesterday to the Newcastle Jets.

However the team has impressive talent according to the Victory boss including young Matildas MelindaJ Barbieri and Annabel Martin who returned from international duty this week after qualifying for the 2017 Asian Cup.

After a number of intercepted passes yesterday, Hopkins wanted players to have more composure in their distribution.

“There’s a bit of talent throughout the side, it’s quite an inexperienced squad if you look at it, I just feel some of the players need to have a bit more confidence in their ability to actually influence the game instead of having these go to players (Nairn and Natasha Dowie) all the time,” Hopkins said.

“I think that’s the pattern week in and week out, it’s quite easy to negate two players.

"If we use Christine as a decoy every now and again then the opposition will be left thinking a little bit whether we’re going to go to her or not.

“When you’ve got a key player like Christine, everyone wants to give her the ball. Sometimes a mistake is we try play to her all the time, we need to play through her more. I think other players around the place need to take a bit of responsibility and use her as a decoy sometimes.”

Hopkins knows what success tastes like after guiding Brisbane Roar to two W-League Championships in 2008/09 and 2010/11.

He acknoweldged hard work was ahead of him after his team was found out by a dominant Newcastle at Lakeside Stadium.

While Hopkins said he was pleased with the chances created against the Reds in the first round, a backwards step was taken on Sunday.

“I am quite hard on the players, but I’m quite a positive coach as well," he added.

"We’ll look for the things we’ve done well this week and we’ve all got to be honest with ourselves to say the standard dropped this week to an unacceptable level.

“It’s no good looking around for other people, we have to look at ourselves first. I think there’s enough honesty in the changing room to look at themselves and say we'll get better next week.

“I think the team chemistry is really good, we just need to lift the performance out of the park to that level as well, it’s not going to be done overnight. I thought there were a lot of positives to come out of the game last week, this week it’s a bit more difficult.”

It does not getting any easier for Victory as they face the Big Blue next Sunday at home with Sydney FC who have three Matildas in their squad including Caitlin Foord, Kyah Simon and Alanna Kennedy.