Melbourne City's final game of the regular season – away to Perth Glory on Easter Sunday evening – cannot completely define their 2016-17 campaign.

But it will go a long way to deciding whether the expensively assembled team gets a pass mark or something more for their efforts in an up-and-down season in which they have flattered too often to deceive.

Michael Valkanis' side goes into the last match of round 27 knowing that a win – by almost any score – would allow it to finish in third place on the ladder.

It occupies that spot on goal difference, just ahead of Brisbane Roar, who at the same time play host to a Wellington Phoenix team with little to play for.

Would third spot be considered a success for a team that has invested so heavily, specifically on the multi-million-dollar acquisition of Socceroo veteran Tim Cahill as a marquee man?

Third place would not only give City a home final – and set them up for a potential semi-final blockbuster with Melbourne Victory – but it would almost certainly give them a spot in the qualifying rounds of the Asian Champions League. That is assuming, of course, that they could get through their first home final when they might have to face Sunday's opponents a week later but on their own turf.

There is no doubt that the club's owners, City Football Group, are very keen to see its Australian affiliate extend the brand's name and image in Asia.

It has a stake in a Japanese club, Yokohama F Marinos, while the parent company, CFG, also has close relations with Asian investors. In late 2015 it announced that a Chinese consortium, CFC, had invested some $US400 million into the group, valuing the whole enterprise at around $US3 billion.

That partnership was designed to help the CFG leverage the huge expansion and business opportunities that lie in China – and by extension the rest of Asia – so there is little doubt that qualifying, if only for the preliminary round of Asian Champions League play-offs, would be regarded as a major success. Even better, of course, to make the grand final and guarantee qualification for the group stage.

Does winning the FFA Cup make this a successful season? How badly affected were they by the departure of coach John van 't Schip?

Given that City will get a home final – unless they were to lose by four goals or more in Perth – I think that achievement, along with the Cup success, must represent a pass mark, but no more, for a club with such lofty ambitions and the resources that make them the envy of the rest of the league.

That Cup final triumph, when City became one of only two teams all season to be able to beat Sydney FC, made City the first of the "new" clubs (those not in at the start of the A-League) to actually win anything.

The fact that Gold Coast United and North Queensland Fury, two other expansion teams introduced around the same time as the then Melbourne Heart, are no longer in the league shows how hard it is to survive, never mind prosper.

Of course it is easy to point to City's deep pockets, enviable resources and the way it can leverage off its parent company's scouting network, and say it should be doing better.

And the simple answer is that yes, it should.

There is no excuse for a club with these advantages to be needing to win a cut-throat away game in the final match of the season to guarantee third spot on the regular-season ladder.

There is no excuse for it to be trailing league leaders Sydney by 24 points.

The Cup win and home final has got them over the line for a pass mark; a Champions League berth would make this season a qualified success.

A proper judgment cannot be made until the finals are finished, and if Cahill writes his own scripts, as he so often appears to, then there may yet be a twist in the tail of City's season.