Melbourne has a difficult fixture coming up, starting with St Kilda this Saturday night at the MCG, followed by Geelong, Hawthorn, Sydney, Carlton, Essendon and Collingwood before the bye.
But Neeld said the club would not be swayed by negative talk among the football community, including the media. He added that the upcoming period was a “short term” view, and that he and the club were looking at the bigger picture.
“I don’t know how many journalists there are that write on footy, but there seems to be a significant number, so you could have a whole heap of opinions and that’s fair enough,” he said.
“When you’re taking over a club and there has clearly been a change in direction … the worst thing that we could do is continually react to people’s articles in the newspaper about upcoming opponents.
“We’re going through a stage of laying some foundations for what will be good times to come, so we need to stay true to the way that we want to play and the way that we want to train and the players that we want to get games into - I think that’s really important.
“You can go and plug holes and do a whole heap of other things, but I don’t think in the long run that’s going to be beneficial.”
Personally, Neeld said he was holding up well, despite Melbourne’s tough start to the season.
“I’m a realist and I’m going [ok],” he said.
“I’d prefer to be four [wins] and zip [losses], but that’s not the case.
“When I came and took the job and the new coaching group started and you analyse the list and how you want to play, we knew what was going on, so that’s ok.”
Meanwhile, Neeld was optimistic co-captain Jack Grimes could now have a clear run at building successive matches after a one-match suspension.
“He’s missed a lot of footy [through injury] and that’s been well documented, so it’s pleasing to get him back,” he said.
“We just need to get some consecutive games into him, and hopefully we can begin to see some rebounding stuff out of the backline.
“We just want to get him playing games consistently, [because] his short career has been littered with too many games missed through injury.”
