Muscat was bemused with referee Shaun Evans’ decision to overrule the linesman’s call on Luke Brattan’s goal in Victory’s 2-0 loss to crosstown rival Melbourne City in the FFA Cup semi-final.

The ball evaded goalkeeper Lawrence Thomas and City star Tim Cahill appeared to be in an offside position ducking as the ball was in flight as the linesman originally adjudged him to be interrupting traffic.

“I’m not too concerned about it because what I will do on Wednesday is I’ll email them again, Ben Wilson and I’ll ask him to come and explain to the players the rules, again,” Muscat said.

“How we can justify that in hindsight now, because I can accept ‘you know what? Sorry I made a mistake’ and we move on.

“It was just a little bit of accountability rather than a hiding. It’s just blatant and if it’s missed then that’s fine, but don’t try and cover it up and insult people’s intelligence.

“But if we’re going to try and insult peoples intelligence by saying there was nothing in it… I know two things - there was a strike, Tim was in between the ball and the goalkeeper and he had to move out of the way otherwise the ball was going to hit him.

“Now it’s beyond belief and now I’m going to have to come in on Monday and explain the rules to the players again, because we obviously don’t know the rules and they’re explaining it differently to us when they were here in this very room six weeks ago.”

Muscat was also bemused by Marco Rojas’ disallowed goal in the second half when Besart Berisha appeared to be in an offside position disallowing the Kiwi’s equaliser.

The Victory boss said he was convinced Berisha did not touch the ball in the process.

“The same thing happens in the second half, the second big decision where Bes is in an offside position, he doesn’t get anything on the ball, Marco scores from an onside position and it’s given offside because Bes obstructed the keeper,” he said.

“He was offside, he went for the ball and didn’t touch it.

“But again there’s a contradiction there because they’re both exactly the same because (Dean) Bouzanis can’t move until he recognises Bes isn’t going to touch the ball and then when he doesn’t touch the ball, Marco is in an onside position.”

Muscat was adamant about the club’s endeavour after being knocked out of the cup’s final two hurdles and also highlighted the timewasting tactics implemented by City.

“We’ll maintain belief, losing 2-0 wasn’t a reflection of the actual football tonight,” he said.

“Considering as well how frustrated the players were with all the delaying and restarts, the players come in very frustrated after the game with the amount of time it was taking to take every corner, every set piece, the rolling around.

“From that perspective, I commend the playing group, because right up until then, the second goal was an individual error, but even at that point in time, we were still pressing and we were still carving out some decent opening so that goal eluded us.”