Kevin Muscat takes blame for Melbourne Victory nightmare

Melbourne Victory coach Kevin Muscat says the buck stops with him after his team’s annihilation at the hands of Sydney FC saying: “I’ll take responsibility for all of it.”

Adam Le Fondre celebrates scoring a penalty goal.

Kevin Muscat has taken full responsibility for Melbourne Victory’s Mother’s Day massacre, conceding his side didn’t turn up to their semi-final.

As Sydney FC counterpart Steve Corica turns his attention to premiers Perth Glory and Sunday’s away grand final, Muscat could only hold his hands up at the biggest Big Blue defeat in A-League history, one that robs them the chance of winning back-to-back titles.

“We had a very off night,” Muscat said.

“Credit to Sydney, they played really well and they’ve earned the right to go to the grand final.

“In sport sometimes this happens. You have your highs, and this was certainly a low for us.

“We didn’t perform anywhere near our capabilities. We can start talking about mental, physical and tactics — I’ll take responsibility for all of it. We didn’t turn up tonight.

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Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat looks dejected after another Sydney FC goal.

“We move on and start planning for next year. We’re a proud football club, we’ll pick ourselves up and explore areas because we need to get better.”

Even Corica admitted the 6-1 scoreline took him by surprise.

“But we were very confident going into the game that we’d get the win,” Corica said.

“The goals came tonight. I did say at some stage we’ll smash some team, and tonight everything went our way.”

Corica revealed he mentioned last season’s 3-2 extra-time semi-final loss to Victory in the change rooms before the match.

Kevin Muscat cuts a forlorn figure as he makes his way off the pitch after the thrashing.

“I kept it quiet all week but there’s a lot of boys who were there last year and that obviously hurt us,” he said.

“They wanted to put it right and they did that tonight in outstanding fashion.

“They can enjoy this win but we’re not going to get carried away. We’ll bring the boys back down to earth next week.

“Perth are a good team so we need to be ready for everything they throw at us, but we’ll give it back as well.”

Originally published as Kevin Muscat takes blame for Melbourne Victory nightmare