FIXING Melbourne's defensive pressure and intensity will be the key to the Demons returning to their previous best according to coach Simon Goodwin.

Goodwin is confident ball movement tweaks will pay dividends if his players can dial up the defensive intent. 

Melbourne's man in charge also gave positive news on the injury front for both Steven May and Kozzy Pickett, while forecasting changes ahead at the selection table. 

Where we need to improve

“What we're doing without the ball, isn't near the level it needs to be," Goodwin said.

"We need to change how we defend. We're far too easy to play against, and when people look at us and the lack of pressure and the stuff we're doing without the ball, that's what concerns people and it concerns me as a coach.

“For a long time at this club, we've valued it to a really high level.

“When we get it back we'll see it pretty quickly, everyone will see it.

“We're going to train it, you’ll see this fight, you’ll see this resilience and you'll see a team that's hard to play against against."

Keeping the faith with ball movement tweaks

“We're committed to going down this path of trying to play a different way, a new way, a better way," Goodwin said.

"With that will come a little bit more scoring. Right now, we're getting our opportunities and we're not quite taking them.

"We’ll certainly stick with how we're trying to operate in terms of our ball movement."

No dramas with Kozzy’s light session

"Kozzy just rolled a little bit of an ankle on the weekend, but it's Tuesday. He'll train Thursday and be right to go," Goodwin said.

May ready to bounce back

"Steven had an incident in the game with his plantar fascia," Goodwin said.

"In a lot of ways, it's a positive incident because it's a tear that helps the recovery.

"He's actually feeling a lot better in terms of his plantar fascia today than what he did last week.

"We're hopeful that he'll get up for Thursday and be right to go on the weekend.

"In some ways, an incident that is pretty painful at the time can be a real positive moving forward."

The Freo Fight

“They've had a good record over us in recent times and we know the quality that they've got," Goodwin said.

"We see it as an enormous opportunity for us to come out and play to a level, and inspire each other and our supporters."

The selection table

“There'll be change. We're not playing to the level that we think we're capable of," Goodwin said.

"We'll work through that later in the week. It's still pretty early. We need to see what availability we've got."