City’s Stefan Colakovski celebrates after scoring in their demolition of Melbourne Victory.Credit:Getty Images
It was clinical,comprehensive and it looked,in the end,rather cruel as City cut through a hapless Victory at will.
These are dark and desperate days for Victory,a proud club which is a shadow of its former self.
A shattered Grant Brebner said that while he took full responsibility for the abject performance he would not quit. “It quite simply wasn’t good enough. I am not going to try to find excuses for it. It was an unacceptable 90 minutes,” he said,admitting the team was at rock bottom.
“It was humiliating. I am not going to push the blame anywhere else. I am the head coach and I take responsibility for results like that.”
Brebner will inevitably come in for scathing criticism,with plenty quick to point out that the club should have been aware of the pitfalls it was courting by appointing such an inexperienced boss.
But it would be far too easy to scapegoat the Scotsman,who is being assisted by former English Premier League manager Steve Kean. The buck does not stop solely with him.
Riven by internal divisions – founding shareholder Richard Wilson put his 16 per cent stake on the market on Friday – and seemingly bereft of leadership and direction,all in the management team above Brebner,from chairman Anthony Di Pietro,football boss Drew Sherman and CEO Trent Jacobs down,must also take their share of blame for the rapid decline of a team that was A-League champion less than three years ago.