Having returned favourite sons Adama Traore, Andrew Nabbout and Robbie Kruse and brought in a crop of what was – on paper – a highly credentialed group of foreigners, Victory and their new gaffer in Kurz were widely tipped to be amongst the challengers for both the Premiership and Championship ahead of the season’s commencement

Instead, sitting second bottom of the table – with all its adjacent competitors possessing at least a game in hand on them – Victory’s start to the 2019/20 season is one of the worst in the celebrated club’s history.

Perhaps showing his frustration with his new charges, Kurz declared that his group needed to get back to basics following their 3-1 defeat to Adelaide United last week - something that he says the group responded well to.  

“I think we were on the same page that the attitude, the way we performed was not good enough, that we missed the basics,” Kurz said today.

“Basics for me in soccer is ‘I want to win a duel, I want to win a run duel, I want to win the one against one’ and, in this case, Adelaide were better.

“We lost every second ball, we lost the first ball, we lost the run duel and afterwards you can speak about tactics or this kind of stuff, but you must show the basics on the pitch.

“I think the whole group has spoken and I had a chat with a lot of players - I think we were on the same page that we have to show from the first minute another attitude and then I think we are sure that we can perform in a better way.”

International signings Jakob Poulsen and Kristijan Dobras have failed to fire since their arrival at AAMI Park, in part leading to an ever-increasing reliance on talisman Ola Toivonen to provide a spark.

The Swede, whose two-year contract ends at the end of the season, has either scored or assisted all of his side’s goals so far this season.

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Kurz also provided an update on both Poulsen and Dobras.

“[Dobras is] not in the squad, not available,” said Victory’s gaffer, despite the Austrian midfielder being included in the official extended squad sent to the FFA.