Winger Fahid Ben Khalfallah and fullback Jason Geria will definitely miss the journey west, having each picked up suspensions after receiving yellow cards in Wellington.

Mitch Austin and Daniel Georgievski are thought likely to come in for them for Saturday night's game, another in a series of difficult assignments Victory face during their January fixture pile-up.

But Muscat could freshen things up further in midfield and attack as he has to be mindful that after Victory return from Perth they entertain league-leaders Sydney next Thursday at Etihad Stadium.

Both teams will still be first and second on the ladder when that game comes around (irrespective of the results this weekend) so the outcome of that Australia Day match may well have a significant impact on the destination of the Premiers Plate at the end of the season.

Marco Rojas, the New Zealand international winger, is another player who has had a disrupted season because of All Whites commitments and Muscat floated the idea that he may not play as big a part in the Perth game as some might imagine, with Jai Ingham a chance to start instead.

"Players will come into contention, without doubt. The boys who played in Wellington didn't do too much this morning. It gave an opportunity for others to impress and there were one or two of those," Muscat said in Melbourne after a final pre-game training session before the team flew to WA.

"We have some options, but we will have to make a couple of forced changes – Geria and Fahid.

"We will freshen the team up and get some more energy into the team and go to Perth with a clear intent to take three points.

"Perth are always difficult to beat. They have had some issues throughout this season but they seem to have steadied.

"We are going to have to be very good tomorrow [Saturday] night, but do I believe our best is good enough to go to Perth and win, without doubt.

"Everyone is putting their hand up to play. No one is saying it's too tough."

Asked whether Rojas would be one of those players rested, Muscat said: "Rojas has had his games here, had some international travel with New Zealand, we have just got to monitor and see where he is at.

"No risks will be taken, and on the back of that you see that Jai Ingham is knocking the door down. Do we lose too much from that perspective if Marco is not fully fit? Those are the decisions we will calculate."

The Victory boss made no excuses for the uncharacteristically uncompetitive defeat in Wellington, which snapped the club's six-game winning streak.

"We took a little bit of a slap in the face on Tuesday night in NZ and we are looking for a reaction tomorrow night," he said.

"We didn't really get started. We started very poorly from the first minute and didn't really seem to recover.

"The disappointment stems from the fact that we were on such a really good run and playing really well. It was a poor performance by our standards and when that happens you get what you deserve.

"We came out second best in all the individual battles. Having that poor start we found it too difficult to pull ourselves out on the night.

"We will take our medicine and move on. I would rather focus on the reasons rather than make excuses."