Melbourne Victory’s showing against Wellington Phoenix on Tuesday was a let down on its previous performances, but head coach Kevin Muscat insists his side can return to top form quickly.
Victory was defeated 3-0 by the Phoenix at Westpac Stadium – the first time it has been kept goalless this season.
Before the loss, Victory had won six straight games and was unbeaten in nine.
“We’re disappointed because we’ve set some really high standards throughout the season,” Muscat said after the match.
“Particularly in the last six or seven weeks, when we’ve got some really good results and scored a lot of goals, and tonight we fell short of those standards.
“I’m not one to look for excuses, I look for reasons. The (windy) conditions are not an excuse. We had to be better in our execution under those conditions, and we weren’t.
“We didn’t threaten the goal enough and we encouraged Wellington to press us by keeping the ball in our back third.
“All in all, I don’t think we thought our way through the game well.
“We’ve been on a very good run and it came to an end.”
With not much time to dwell on the result, Victory returns to Melbourne for a couple of days before a trip to Perth to face Glory.
“There’s no reason why we can’t get ourselves back up to the standards we desire very quickly,” Muscat said.
“We’ll get back to Melbourne, recover and head across to Perth with a positive mindset.
“It’s a good challenge for us to go across there and get our performance back to where it should be.”
Saturday night’s match against Perth will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 505 from 7.45pm AEDT.
