After securing their spot in the 2014 AFC Champions League Group Stage, Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat was pleased with his side’s attacking prowess, but insisted there is still plenty to improve on.
The Victory were dominant in large spells of the contest against Muangthong United, and Muscat felt the 2-1 scoreline could have been very different had his side taken their chances.
“Maybe it should have been 6-3, because we had a number of chances,” Muscat said.
“I was convinced at half time if we tighten up a few things defensively, we were just gifting them half chances and gifting them opportunities.
“Because I believed going forward we were going to score. There was no way there could have been another 45 minutes knocking their door down without a goal.
“Translating that belief into the players was pretty easy because they were just as confident as myself – in the end it was a just result.”
Victory’s shaky defence found yet another way of conceding a goal, when Mario Durovski’s inswinging corner kick went in directly without a touch from anyone.
Muscat was disappointment with how that goal was conceded but stayed clear of blaming goalkeeper Nathan Coe for not doing anything with it.
“Ultimately we’re not going to blame one person,” he said.
“The ball’s gone in from a corner, it’s gone in at chest height so from my perspective there’s a number of things that should’ve happened to stop that.
“We gifted them a few opportunities from long balls that were played into our half that should be dealt with relatively easy, but having said that I thought some of the movement and some of the passing to get into their final third, some of the chances created tonight were very good.”
The unlikely hero on the night was vice-captain Leigh Broxham, whose long range drive was heavily deflected into the back of the net to hand Victory safe passage into the next round.
Muscat refuted that Broxham was an unsung hero for the Victory, believing that the rest of the squad do appreciate what he offers the team.
“Maybe that’s the view of individuals but ask his teammates what they think of him,” he said.
“He’s not unsung there and he certainly gives you everything he’s got and he puts in a lot of work.
“He could’ve taken another touch and looked backwards, but he took the responsibility on albeit it took a massive deflection but we’ll give it to him. He doesn’t get many so make sure you give it to him!”
Now that they can look forward to facing the likes of Guangzhou Evergrande, Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors and Yokohama F. Marinos, Muscat is delighted to be able to come up against quality opposition.
“It’s great, I’m happy that we got some good teams to play against because that will test us,” he said.
“We’ll go there and maybe for once we’ll have nothing to lose because it just seems that at this football club every game is a massive game and nothing is going to change for us in the Champions League.”
Muscat knows that his side will have to be at their best to match the cream of Asia, and believes there is still plenty work to do to get there.
“When we are close to and when we are at our best we are going to create chances but there are certain things that we’ll need to tighten up on,” he said.
“We’re playing against an Asian team that [means] individuals had to modify their game, there’s a Japanese referee, all these things you have to modify and adapt to but from our perspective we tried to keep the tempo upbeat by what we did.
“We played nice and quickly and we eliminated a lot of the things you normally see when you play against Asian teams.”