On the brink of half-time Victory led 1-0 Fahid Ben Khalfallah’s cross found Mitch Austin whose header looked to have doubled the lead before being ruled offside by the linesman.

Seven minutes into the second half, Jason Geria brought down Jumpei Kusukami in the box, but was not paid a penalty by Jarred Gillet.

“We should’ve been 2-0 up at half-time, granted, they should’ve had a penalty but we also had a goal disallowed which was onside which was before the (non) penalty,” Muscat said.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, I could be honest and the headlines will be again tomorrow ‘Muscat slams referee’, all I was doing was being honest. First one was onside and the second one was a penalty.”

The Victory boss was fair from happy with his team’s performance in the first half despite hitting the lead courtesy of Oliver Bozanic in the first half.

Muscat believed last week’s 2-1 loss to Sydney FC reflected a stronger performance than what was displayed against the Wanderers.

“Funny game because performance last week was better than it was tonight, we lose 2-1 in Sydney and we win 3-0 tonight, so I’m going to go mad trying to work the game out, I’m going to give it a good go,” he said.

“I thought we were disappointed in that first half, structurally, we didn’t get things right too often which allowed them comfortable possession.

“The fact we didn’t execute the way we wanted to press in the first half, it made difficult for us. Having said that, I thought we looked threatening and the one time we did press right, we got the chance and we scored the goal.

“It was nowhere near good enough as a group when we didn’t have the ball, but when we manage to wrestle it back I thought we were threatening.”

Victory travel abroad to take on Wellington Phoenix away next weekend.