Melbourne Heart coach John van 't Schip was buoyed by the performance of his side in their 2-0 loss to English Premier League club Everton last night. The brand new A-League franchise, which is yet to play a competitive match for premiership points, took on the might of the Toffees and were impressive in undertaking their task.

There were a lot of good signs shown by the team which is just in its embryonic stage and van 't Schip was satisfied with the hit out.

"I think in total it was a good performance. If you see the first two minutes we were a little bit lucky that they missed the (Louis Saha) penalty because otherwise maybe the confidence gets to a low point but we got into the game," he said after the match.

"We started playing the ball around, I think we created a few god possibilities. Gerald Sibon had a very good one and the shot of Josip (Skoko) made a great save of the goalkeeper of Everton (Iain Turner).

"Of course they had their moments as well and that's the difference you could see this evening that when we make a mistake they will punish you immediately and we had a few opportunities and we couldn't make the goal.

"Overall I think we played very well, we controlled a lot of the game and with that we created some good chances, not a lot of course, but it's normal. You're playing against a very good side which is well-organised, even though they're still at the start of their season. We are also not yet at the end of our pre-season but we still have some weeks to go and I think if you see what we have done until now, we are getting closer and closer to being ready for the 5th of August (opening match against Central Coast Mariners)."