COACH Paul Roos says Melbourne is prepared for Richmond’s best football when the teams meet at the MCG on Sunday.

Melbourne is looking for its third win of the season off the back of strong performances against Collingwood and North Melbourne.

Roos said his team was preparing for an intense contest against a Tigers side that has played finals for the past three years.

“We’ll prepare for their best, which has been really good over the last three years,” he said on Friday.

“That’s the way we prepared for Collingwood last week and that’s the way we’ll prepare for Richmond.”

A strong first quarter set up the win against Collingwood, with Melbourne withstanding several fightbacks in the middle of the game.

Roos said with a focus on continual improvement throughout the year, Richmond would prove another good test for his young team.

“I think what we’ve seen this year is a team that’s continuing to improve,” Roos said.

“Our expectation internally is we’ve got to keep getting better week in, week out over the course of a long season.

“That doesn’t change this week – Richmond have played finals the last three years so in that period of time, they’ve been a very good team.”

Roos said consistency and building good habits were the keys to Melbourne’s long-term improvement.

“When you listen to the players talk internally and externally, they’re starting to understand what we want them to be able to do and that’s to play a style of football that we think is going to stack up over the long term,” he said.

“Young teams find that a lot harder to do than Hawthorn and Sydney or experienced teams like that.

“Our expectation is to come out and play the way we have over the first month – [the] Essendon [loss] was a hiccup – but to play that way consistently.

“If you’re able to do that, then eventually it becomes a habit and eventually you don’t have to remind players of certain things in a game. We’re still a fair way off that but we think we’re getting closer to that."

Melbourne is looking to secure back-to-back wins for the first time since 2011 but Roos said the focus was on continuing to reduce the gap between the team’s best and worst football.

“To be a good team, a finals team and a top four team, clearly you need to string wins together,” Roos said.

“But I think for us it’s about continuing to play really, really good football.

“Their best is going to be very good [and] if our best plays against their best, based on the body of work, you’d probably think it’s going to be hard to win.

“But if we continue to narrow that gap [between our best and worst football], which we appear to be [doing], then we can beat some really, really good sides.”