Well, that was …. interesting I guess.
We had two guests from the UK over to watch the game, and they were thoroughly entertained. Which is not exactly great for us. Three times we went ahead, three times we were pegged back by what seemed like very avoidable (and very chaotic) goals.
First goal, I thought Izwan should have parried it away harder, but unfortunately it went straight back into the middle of the penalty area and the rebound was swept home. Second goal and third goal, I thought Hafiz Nor could have done way better. But to be fair to him, he’s not a traditional right-back. If Tajeli and Mamat were available, he would not be in that position at all.
It is a worrying sign that we seem to be struggling against a side that is the second-bottom in the league. It is also a very worrying sign that while we had 20+ shots, our opponents also had 20+ shots. This is why I picked the word “chaos” to describe last night’s game.
I am not privy to the stats but I do wonder if the LCS fitness staff can see a drop-off in performance in terms of hard yards run because to the naked eye, it really seems to me that we look very tired. And let me get this straight – I am not blaming the boys for this. I think we can all see from last season how Tampines suffered badly after they came back from their Champions League games. Physically, they looked spent. And I feel we’re seeing much of the same from our Sailors in the past 2 months. It really seems like when an attack breaks down, our players just don’t have the legs to get back in time to keep our opposition out.
If there’s anyone / anything to blame, I think I’d question why more of our squad players were not used earlier in the campaign. I look at someone like Hami Syahin, who I used to call the Singaporean Thiago Alcantara, and wonder, could he not have replaced Shahdan in some games once the game was won? Could he not have started in more games? The gulf between our lineup and the lineup of our opponents should be a huge one – at least on paper. If there is any criticism of Kim Do-Hoon, I guess he was abit too conservative and did not trust the bench players more. Might that have helped to preserve some of the legs of our key players a little? It’s hard to say. I will probably address all this in a longer post in my end-of-season review.
I have seen a lot of talk also about how Luka Lalic is to blame for this alone. I am not so sure about that. While I am not the greatest fan of his big talk and how he shat on Kim Do-Hoon after his appointment, I think the players have to take some responsibility too. Their opponents are mostly not national team players, while we’re chock-full of them and have the luxury of calling on players like Hami Syahin and Gabriel Quak off the bench. Surely, man for man, we’re the Galacticos of local football. That we have to rely on Maxime Lestienne again and again is not really making me feel very optimistic about the Sailors, and by extension, our national team. This is essentially the mild version of what Joseph had to say. If you want the full blow of his disappointed rant, please head on down to his post-match reactions taken last night (Post-Match Reactions – Lion City Sailors v Balestier Khalsa (Singapore Cup 27 Oct ’22) – YouTube).
For now, just two things before I end this post. 1) I hope Lalic manages to find a way to minimise errors from our players moving forward. If we continue making these mistakes, we will definitely not win the Cup. 2) We have got a guest writer to write tactical analysis posts on our Singapore Cup games, and tonight we will be publishing the first of these posts. Look out for it!
