“We came here and tried to play our style of football, but I think we weren’t up to scratch, personally – and that’s my opinion – there are a lot of things we need to work on,” the former Socceroos midfielder said.

“At the end of the day I think we made too many mistakes and against a quality team they’ll punish you every time.

“You can’t afford to make mistakes because they have that quality, especially in the final third of the field, where they can really take control of the game and even against the run of play they can punish you.”

With Melbourne the only team in this year’s tournament yet to earn a point, and with them yet to taste victory in any of their 21 away fixtures across their seven AFC Champions League campaigns, Valeri said they needed to heed the lessons learned from this loss.

“I think we have to take this lesson, and it’s happened to us a few times, I think our style of football sometimes clashes,” he added.

“We can take some positives from the game, but again there’s a lot of work to do and it’s a shame because now it’s going to be very hard to get through to the next stage.

“We have a [league] game on Sunday, so we have a busy schedule and it’s going to be tough. It’s a challenge but we’re up for the challenge.”

Melbourne are bottom of Group F and sit six points behind the trio of Guangzhou, Daegu FC and Sanfrecce Hiroshima. They host Guangzhou in the return meeting in two weeks’ time and defeat would confirm their elimination with two games to play. 

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