Melbourne great Ron Barassi believes coach Dean Bailey will be under enormous pressure if the Demons have another horror 2009.
Barassi, a four-time premiership coach and the club's No.1 ticketholder for 2009, said the second-year coach could ill-afford another season on the bottom of the ladder.
Barassi said he expected Melbourne, widely tipped to again finish last after just three wins last year, to win seven games in 2009.
"This year it is a better side. And they've had last year to get sick over and try and recover from," Barassi told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
He said a bad year results-wise could be excused 'but in efforts then that would be a different story'.
Asked if he believed those remarks were fair, Bailey said: "I've got a contract for two years."
One of the competition's most cash-strapped clubs, Melbourne is not in the financial position to dump a coach with more than a season to run on his contract.
Bailey was more expansive on Melbourne's hopes for 2009, saying Demons fans had more cause for optimism now than they did 12 months ago.
Not surprisingly, Bailey refused to create a rod for his own back by making a win-loss prediction but said the club was well placed to gain ground on the competition's mid-tier clubs.
Able for the first time to conduct its entire pre-season at the one venue - Casey Fields - Melbourne's list was stronger and fitter than it was heading into the 2008 campaign, Bailey said.
Some players had added two to three kilos of muscle to their frames, Bailey said, enabling them to become better equipped to tackle, win 50-50 contests in the air and on the ground.
"Starting a bit earlier has meant we've been able to build our players a little bit more," he said.
"Again it may well be we're catching up to that middle band of clubs because we were so far off last year. But the players have certainly worked hard."
Last year Bailey wanted his side to be competitive. This year he wants them to be consistently competitive.
"We expect we'll be in the game for longer. I don't expect to have long periods of the game where teams are kicking consecutive goals like what happened last year," he said.
"We like to think last year's dead and buried. The things we worked on in terms of fitness and our skill and decision-making in the pre-season we've put a lot of time in it."
"And over the NAB Cup we've probably been OK at it but the home and away games are what it's all about."