Melbourne Victory midfielder Mitch Nichols has admitted that his partnership with James Troisi has blossomed naturally, and is looking to keep it up against Adelaide United on Saturday night.
The relationship between the two attacking midfielders has been the feature of Victory’s season so far, and has been central to almost every goal that the team has scored so far this season.
Nichols says that the similarities he shares with Troisi is a big part of why the two have struck a chord almost instantly.
“It’s not hard to strike up quality relationships with players,” Nichols said.
“He’s been overseas and he’s played at a high level, it’s been easy since he’s come.
“I think we just like the ball and to play off each other.
“We’re both smart players and we feed off each other.”
Nichols and co. face Adelaide United coming off back to back losses, but the Queenslander knows that things could have been very different.
“We haven’t been playing too badly and that’s a positive thing,” he said.
“If we were coming in with two shocking losses it would be a bit of panic in the team.
“But we’ve got everyone relaxed, we know we got to improve.
“I think it’s just been lapses of concentration that have cost us.
“Against Sydney FC we gave them three goals, and Western Sydney we switch off for one moment and they punished us.”
One sure thing is that Victory are hard at work to rectify all the problems that they have encountered over the last few weeks, and the message for training is simple for Nichols.
“It’s about taking what we did well last week, taking that and improving on it,” he said.
“Keeping our structure, our discipline, our ball movement, creating more chances and then taking the chances and the results will come.
“We’re going to strive to improve that against Adelaide and hopefully we can have the job done then.”