Melbourne Victory coach Kevin Muscat has slammed his side’s round of 16 FFA Cup performance against Hume City, simply saying he is “grateful” to have come away with a slender 1-0 win.
Besart Berisha scored the only goal of the game 26 minutes in after Fahid Ben Khalfallah was brought down inside the penalty area, with Victory holding on for a narrow triumph at ABD Stadium on Wednesday night.
Victory appeared comfortable throughout the majority of the evening but lacked cutting edge in the final third, unable to shut the door on the gallant hosts.
Hume enjoyed a promising spell themselves, peppering Lawrence’s Thomas’ goal in the final 30 minutes without truly testing the goalkeeper.
Muscat was scathing of the holders’ performance, labelling it “very, very poor”.
“(I’m) grateful in the end,” Muscat said.
“It wasn’t a good performance from ourselves and on the night I thought we got away with it.
READ MORE: Talking Points: FFA Cup – Hume City 0 Melbourne Victory 1 – Holders do enough
“We didn’t keep the ball anywhere near as well as we should have, turning over possession and given them an incentive to come at us.
“From that perspective, it wasn’t a good night for us but we’re happy to be in the next round.
“The reality is you try and put something in place in terms of a game plan and tactics but if you can’t keep possession of the ball, you can’t implement any of that.
“We were very, very poor in retaining possession of the ball tonight and subsequently, that ends up in a scrappy, ordinary performance.”
Such was Muscat’s disappointment that the gaffer laid down the marker to his players, questioning their trustworthiness when in possession.
“If you’re careless, you can’t implement anything. Structurally, it’s going to be hard to pick the bones out of that. It was the simple, fundamental things (that broke down).
“We need to ask ourselves whether we’re trustworthy on the ball individually. I don’t want to win 1-0 and play like that. I’m far from satisfied with that performance.
“I don’t think we made progress tonight.”
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