FIND out what’s being said about the club in the major daily newspapers on Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Herald Sun

Skipper tells Scully ‘stick to your guns’
By Matt Windley

MELBOURNE captain Brad Green has implored teammate and GWS target Tom Scully to stick to his guns in his contract negotiations. Green also backed embattled coach Dean Bailey to continue on beyond this season. Green likened Scully's negotiations to his own the last time he came out of contract. "From my own point of view I said we'd hold off on contract negotiations until the end of the year," Green said on Fox Sports' On the Couch. "And that's all Tom's doing and that's all Tom's said."With any negotiation there's tos-and-froes in the way that they go about it, but my advice to Tom is: just keep doing what you're doing. You've said that you're going to hold off, keep that word. "I think that's the disappointing thing - is that Tom thinks that no one believes him when he says that that's all he's doing, he's putting off his negotiations until the end of the year."

For Bailey, it’s all about development
By Jack Werrett

DEAN Bailey will not necessarily consider this year a failure if Melbourne does not make the finals. “I’ll consider the season a failure if our players don’t get the right experience during the year,” he said today. The emphasis, according to Bailey, is on developing the younger players and ensuring they continue to improve as the season progresses. "I think we’ve played 36 or 37 players at this stage, and I think we’ve unearthed three or four really good ones," he said.

The Age

Demons need a big scalp for credibility
By Jesse Hogan

MELBOURNE must overcome more than five years of chronic fallibility against the league's elite teams to earn a finals berth. While the Demons would be favoured to win their final three matches of the home and away season — they face the bottom three clubs, Richmond, Gold Coast and Port Adelaide — their chances of returning to the top eight will be all but extinguished if they cannot win one of their next three matches. The challenge presented by Geelong at Skilled Stadium on Saturday will be followed by matches against Carlton at the MCG and West Coast at Etihad Stadium. Melbourne coach Dean Bailey has yet to lead the Demons to victory over a top-four side since arriving at the end of 2007. The closest they have come under Bailey, whose contract lapses at the end of the season, was the draw against Collingwood on last year's Queen's Birthday holiday. The last time the Demons beat a team that finished in that season's top four was in 2006 under Neale Daniher. In Bailey's first season in 2008 the Demons lost by an average of 55.9 points against the top four. They did, however, improve in the next two seasons, cutting the average to 42.7 in 2010 and 18.8 last year. The Demons' improvement in win-loss ratio this season — they need only one win from six matches to equal last season's result — has not extended to matches against the elite. Against this season's top four — Collingwood, Geelong, Hawthorn and Carlton — their average losing margin has ballooned to 58.5 points. Bailey had no inclination to dissect his club's barren run against top-four teams, instead declaring: "You take each game in isolation."