Michael Voss has taken aim at his own team, bemoaning a lack of will in Saturday night’s 39-point loss to St Kilda.
The Carlton boss also said he would play down speculation about his future, despite the Blues having their worst start to a season since 2019.
The Blues have just one win in eight games, the latest defeat after conceding a fifth half-time opener this season in a 39-point loss to St Kilda.
While Voss said the Blues’ ball movement had improved, he criticized his team for failing to take a defensive stand when the Saints kicked eight third-term goals to all but secure the win.
Voss said his midfield was “beaten” by the Saints on a night when the Blues conceded eight goals to one in the third term, and had just six tackles in the quarter.
“But if you’re looking for those times when you’re pressured by the opposition, and that might just be having three passes in a row against you, or four passes in a row against you, and you lose some ground, we’ve got to be better at holding,” Voss said.
“And that’s not the sixth question, that’s the commitment of the whole team to do that.
“The truth is that the defense has not been strong enough this year. We are scoring against a lot. So there are some fundamentals that obviously we need to be able to clean up, but we have to be stronger defensively than we are now against any side. So, when the side is pressing, stop, stop. And right now we are not doing that.”
Voss will be out of contract at the end of the season, and faces an uphill battle to save his job.
Asked how he would handle another week under the spotlight, Voss replied: “(I) just don’t think so. So I don’t understand spending too much time speculating about that.
“I’ll go home, watch the game, review it, come out on Monday. I’ll be very clear on what we need to be able to get, and then we look at the week, and we get those peripheral things to be able to be better next week. The circles around it are not for me to guess – what we’re going to do is get what we need to be able to.”
