Late Mark Bridge goal seals narrow win for Western Sydney Wanderers over Melbourne Victory Mark Bridge celebrates the winner for the Wanderers. MELBOURNE Victory coach Kevin Muscat offered no excuses for last night's loss to Western Sydney Wanderers but promised fans they were on the right track. With Mark Milligan watching with his Socceroos teammates from the stands and Kosta Barbarouses away with the Kiwi national team, Victory threatened to inflict a first defeat before an 82nd minute Mark Bridge goal secured a 1-0 win for the Wanderers. The Wanderers, who have conceded just three goals in six games, returned to the top of the table and opened up a six-point gap on fifth-place Victory. "The reality is tonight was a performance we should've got something from the game," Muscat said. There's improvement from the side, there has been distractions but it's not an excise. The performance was good and we're heading in the right direction. Tonight was different (to last week), it was a much improved performance and I was just disappointed to walk away with nothing. We had a very good first half, we were on top of them in long periods. Just on the edge of the box we needed a little but more patience but credit to them they defend well. They make it hard for you, especially here. They're very disciplined getting behind the ball. But it's more about us, our structure was far better and we stopped then counter attacking. We didn't have a bundle of scoring opportunities tonight A little bit more composure and better quality going forward and it would've been a different story if they had to come out in the second half and had to claw a goal back. After beating Wellington in his opening game since replacing Ange Postecoglou, Muscat has lost his next two ahead of Saturday's clash with Adelaide United at Etihad Stadium. Missing Youssouf Hersi, Tomi Juric and dumped skipper Michael Beauchamp, Wanderers coach Tony Popovic said it was one of his team's best performances of the season. "All round it was a very good performance against a very good team," Popovic said. It was an encounter we expected against a very good opponent, but patches were a bit longer in terms of our good play which is encouraging moving forward and we'll work hard to make those periods even longer. Crowd: 15,854. Referee: Kris Griffiths-Jones.