“There are a lot of boys hurting in that changing room at the moment.

“Every aspect of our game was unacceptable. There are no excuses, we weren’t good enough.

“There was a massive crowd tonight, it was the biggest game of the year for (the fans) and we’ve let them down. There’s no panic though – we have six days in which to put it right," said Muscat.

Coach Ernie Merrick admitted Victory had been intimidated by Sydney during the defeat by their arch rivals.

The Melbourne coach was scathing of his team’s performance, with goals from Mark Bridge and John Aloisi handing Sydney a surprisingly comfortable victory at the Telstra Dome.

Merrick said: “It was a fair result, they were the better team on the night.

“We are scrappy in the first half – for some reason we were intimidated. The second half was better, but we just didn’t have a goalscorer.

“We were standing off players and second to every ball. The slick inter-passing wasn’t there. The marking on (Steve) Corica in the fist half was a disgrace.”

Merrick conceded that his team was undermined by its recent disciplinary problems, with the absence of suspended striker Archie Thompson keenly felt in a match in which Victory failed to seriously test Sydney goalkeeper Ivan Necevski.

“There’s no doubt we’ve paid the price for the red cards. We didn’t have goalscorers out there. No-one had composure in front of goal," said Merrick.