Melbourne Victory coach Ernie Merrick has lauded his players for completing such a brilliant form reversal in the Asian Champions League.

Last week, the Victory were hammered 4-0 by Kawasaki Frontale in Japan and looked way out of their depth, but they bounced back last night at home to score a fighting 1-0 win and grab their first points of the group stage for this season and their performance was praised by Merrick who was confident a win was just around the corner.

"I thought it was great effort by the boys. I mean we were beaten 4-0 over in Japan we turned that around to a 1-0 win and we did it well," he said.

"You've got to praise the group. Whenever they need to, they pulled together. They've never let us down. They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and went out and played extremely well."

The Victory need to win their remaining two matches and have results go their way if they are any chance of progressing to the Round of 16. They face Chinese club Beijing Guoan at home on April 14 in a must-win encounter for both clubs.