Athiu injury leaves Victory without a striker, Muscat remains positive

However, Glory rallied and Chris Ikonomidis scored in the third minute of second-half stoppage time to secure Tony Popovic his first win in charge of Perth. Muscat blamed a “structural” error for that goal.

The first half from Victory was poor, but Muscat refused to talk down his side, saying he believed Victory played well. When questioned if the first half was underwhelming, he said: “I didn’t see it that way”.

“Me speaking about positives is not going to get a headline, you’ll wait for a grab that’s not so positive and errs on negative and that will get a great run but I’m not there yet. I am honestly not there,” Muscat said.

“In relation to the score [2-0 behind at half-time] we were on the canvas but in terms of the performance we were far from the canvas in my view.

“We will play a hell of a lot worse than that this year and win. Performance needs to be badysed and there was so much to like about it, it was so good.

“Yes, you allude to [when] we were a couple of goals down and as time goes on … we will eliminate those errors that at the moment creep in from time to time and we concede from them.

“There was certainly a lot to like in the way we get forward in the way we create chances, the way we force them into their own box in the second half.”

The errors he referred to were Antonis’ scuffed clearance which fell to Chianese to strike home and Georg Niedermeier’s missed header which allowed Keogh to score the second.

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Melbourne were a much better side in the second half and Muscat said that was because his players started to more intelligently use the wide space that was being created by the movement of Japanese marquee Keisuke Honda and Antonis.

This was taken up by full-backs Corey Brown and Roux who caused havoc down the wings and brought Kosta Barbarouses and James Troisi into play. Honda also improved his output in the second half and he layed on both Victory goals and had a stinging shot saved by Liam Reddy.

“It was the reason, that little change was the reason we put them on the back foot,” Muscat said.

Muscat also said his side’s 4-4-2 midfield diamond formation was more fluid than that, and indicated he would stick to it.

“There was so much to like about it [in the second half] … yes there are things we are going to have to improve. It wasn’t even the third goal, we had so many bodies in the box. It’s just again, timing of decision and we didn’t have anyone in the middle of the park … where the ball gets played from.”

Victory also lost the first two games of last season, when they charged late and won the grand final against Newcastle. They travel to the Hunter Valley this week for that grand final re-match on Saturday night.