Financial strength can buy big name players and provide a team with tremendous resources, but if the players don't show sufficient fight and desperation, if they allow themselves to be "bullied" on the big stage, if they cannot maintain focus for a whole season, then all that cash will count for nought.

Melbourne City at times delivered good performances throughout the 2016-17 A-League campaign and won the first silverware in the club's history.

But in the end they flattered to deceive, falling into a hole after they won that historic FFA Cup final at the end of November.

For such an expensively assembled squad - with a reported player budget of more than $9 million - it is a long way short of expectations.

The Cup final win was excellent, but a fourth-placed finish, defeat in a home final in week one of the play-offs and another failure to secure an Asian Champions League place was not in the script when the City Football Group began their heavy investment in the Australian game three years go.

The signing of Tim Cahill, the Socceroo legend, was a major reason why those high hopes were ignited at the start of the campaign.

Cahill himself only drove them further with a terrific debut performance when City routed Melbourne Victory 4-1 in round two of the season and he scored a marvellous long range strike.

That night City seemed to be playing at a different level to any other team, but hindsight would show, with the exception of the Cup semi-final (when they beat Victory again) and the final, when they became only one of two teams all season to beat Sydney, that that was the high point of City's season.

All too often they filed to fire and looked like a disjointed, dysfuctional unit, far less than the sum of its parts.

Their inability to focus at the back and keep a clean sheet cost them dear, never more so than in Sunday's semi-final when elementary defensive errors, particularly for Diego Castro's first goal, were an embarrassment in the 2-0 loss to Perth Glory.

Cahill delivered on the field, with 13 goals in all competitions. His aging body meant he could not start every game, but his contribution at many important moments was telling.

His goal in the win over Victory was a statement of intent and certainly galvanised the club in the early rounds, while his second-half header that brought the Cup final win was a high point.

But it wasn't all roses for the Socceroo legend. His bizarre dismissal before he even came on the field against Victory in the controversial 2-1 derby loss at Etihad Stadium was something he would want to forget.

His presence did mean that the team had to change the way it played - certainly compared to the free wheeling outfit it had been a year earlier - and Bruno Fornaroli did not look as effective as he did the previous season, when he broke the record for goals scored during an A-League campaign.

His signature did not lead to the hoped-for growth in City's fanbase. It generated lots of initial excitement, but it became apparent early on that one man, no matter how storied his career had been, was not going to be able to win games on his own.

If City are to grow their supporter numbers, they will do so slowly and incrementally by developing their identity and winning trophies.

Cahill pulled no punches in his post-match analysis of City's elimination final defeat and season overall.

"I know we could have given a lot more tonight. I think this whole season, we've been OK. Expectations have been very high and we have definitely got a talented group of players," he said.

"This big game, which meant so much to our club, we have to be held accountable as players. We got caught on the counter twice and full credit to Perth.

"We can talk all we want [but] they were desperate, they threw their body at everything, they fought for everything.

"We definitely wanted it, but what you want and what you try and do are two different things. Tonight we couldn't match them, they were physically stronger.

"We finished where we deserved to finish and that was getting knocked out tonight."

Cahill held up the FFA Cup win as a measure of success.

"We won the first every trophy with the club, so it's massive. The positive for this, we could have lost that and be standing here now with no silverware and we would have got smashed.

"We walk away with our heads held high, we delivered something that no one thought we could do. I said at the start of the season we haven't shown up to games for a photo shoot, we have competed ... we just weren't good enough."