Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin has at times felt like a man under siege during what has been a thoroughly testing start to the AFL season.
But Goodwin is confident the Demons are starting to build the foundations to their game that can help them return to their best, regardless of whether that's in the finals or not.
With just two wins from seven games, the 16th-placed Dees are unlikely to play in September after storming their way to a preliminary-final berth last season.
Goodwin reckons the poor start to 2019 is partly why the club has had to deal with so many negative headlines.
Over the past fortnight, star recruit Steven May was caught breaching club policy by drinking while injured, the father of Demon Joel Smith criticised the club's "mismanagement" of injured players, and reports emerged of coaching-box tensions.
"When you're not performing to the level that expectation was at, people always look for reasons why that's the case," Goodwin said.
"And fundamentally, the reason is we just haven't played good footy.
"People will come at you and find things that aren't working in your program, and they'll find stories - that's the reality of the world and the business that we live in.
"We understand that but internally we're united, we're committed to getting better and hopefully our results will turn around."
The Dees started the season in dreadful form but looked much better during last week's win over Hawthorn, particularly at the contests.
Goodwin was quietly optimistic the wheel was starting to turn ahead of Saturday's away clash with Gold Coast.
"I think we're starting to get some foundations to our game again which weren't there the first five or six weeks," Goodwin said.
"Once you get some foundations, you can really become the team that you want to become.
"We've built something over the last couple of weeks, albeit very small, but we've still got a lot of work to do for the rest of the year."
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