Melbourne won 3-2 at Adelaide United on Friday night but there was controversy when they fell behind to a Travis Dodd penalty.

Rody Vargas was penalised for a foul on Cristiano inside the box but television replays showed there had been no contact.

Bizarrely, Cristiano then barged into Vargas to concede a penalty at the other end later in the game.

The initial penalty sparked plenty of debate in a week when diving was very much top of the agenda and Merrick made his feelings clear.

He told the Age: "You just have to watch the video. You can't blame the referee in these situations (but) if a player continues to simulate and take dives and gets penalty kicks and free kicks that they score from and elbows people in the face at some stage, someone has to take note of that and surely check the video replay or something. I mean, that's a blight on the game."

Merrick added: "It's just disappointing when certain things happen in a game and the rewards are very high."

As for the win though, Merrick was delighted. He said: "We decided to really go for it, it was three points or nothing.

"We really played with two central defenders and pushed Kevin into a defensive midfield role and said to the other three midfielders to just go for it.

"We decided also to pressure the backline at every opportunity because we wanted to raise the intensity because we knew the Adelaide boys must be tired with their tremendous schedule and it worked well for us.

"I felt we controlled most of the game and created a great number of scoring chances but when you don’t have players like Carlos Hernandez, Ney Fabiano and Archie Thompson you’ve always got to find new goalscorers and it was going to be one of those nights.

"But the boys never let up and we kept getting in there and it was a Billy Celeski toe-poke that won the game for us."

When interviewed by Fox Sports directly after the game, Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar said he had yet to see a replay of the penalty incident.