Victory football operations manager Gary Cole admitted the club wasn't aware that Ney Fabiano, who received an eight-match additional suspension, was able to be cross-examined during last Wednesday's hearing.

"We were unaware about some of those processes, we were unaware that Ney Fabiano could be cross-examined. That was interesting. It's fair to say that we weren't aware that was going to happen," he said.

Cole admitted that Ney Fabiano's poor command of English, plus the fact he only had a translator available over a phone hook-up, made it difficult for him to plead his case.

"English is not his number one language. We did have one of our interpreters available on the phone. She couldn't travel because she was sick," he said.

"I think you have to draw your own conclusions there. I think when you're cross-examined and English isn't your first language, it is a challenge, and it was a challenge for him."

An FFA spokesperson confirmed that all club coaches and CEOs were made aware of the processes ahead of this season and that Danny Vukovic was cross-examined in his case earlier this year.

While the Independent Disciplinary Committee does not operate in the same manner as a court of law, court procedures involving translators usually see the defence request a translator, and the relevant tribunal take responsibility for the resourcing of that translator. This doesn't appear to have occurred in this instance.

But that anomaly doesn't concern Victory, who were happy with the appeals process, but admitted that they could have been better prepared.

"I think the FFA has been very open and very transparent. This is a much better process than happened in year one. The A-League's four years old and it is evolving and the processes are evolving. They're looking to make it more transparent, and there's no doubt that's what happened here," Cole said.

Regardless on the outcome of last Wednesday's hearing, Cole said the club is 100 per cent behind their man.

"Absolutely, we believe Ney Fabiano is innocent. Otherwise, it's pointless putting the appeal in. Melbourne Victory have done a number of things first and one of them was to go before this disciplinary committee," he said.

"It concerns you when you players are suspended for half a season. I think if people deserve those kind of suspensions, then that's just the way it goes, but if you take this case out of it. If you take some of the decisions and compare them to those elsewhere, they seem interesting," he said.

Cole said that the club still believed that the Brazilian, while he did spit, did it in the act of speaking rather then as a separate deliberate action.

"To be honest with you, in the last three minutes of the game, we gave the ball away, and Ernie said something that was universally known as a cuss word and in doing that there was expectorant coming from his mouth. That happens.

"I think we've all had stuff come out of our mouth when we are speaking, does that make it intentional to spit in someone's face. That's what we are talking about," he said.