December 24, 2022

Earlier this week, we announced the signing of Tanjong Pagar United midfielder Rusyaidi Salime. Like the rest of our signings, this one has been rumoured for very long. What does he bring to our midfield? His comments upon joining us have been very positive – “I won’t back out of any challenges and you can expect me to be a tough yet fair player on the pitch. I will try my best to win every challenge as I possibly can and to stop my team from conceding goals,” “I’m someone who always gives my 100% for the team. I will work hard for the club, the fans and my teammates – let’s win something together in the season ahead.” Sounds like the kind of player fans will get behind – do the stats bear that out for him? Hunger and Bite Recalling a conversation I had with LCS staff about a month back, they mentioned that the club was going to get hungrier, leaner, meaner players. I think nobody fits this profile more than Rusyaidi Salime. Let’s take a look at the stats. Right off the bat, you can see that for two years running, Rusyaidi has been in a lot of foul trouble. 7 yellow cards last season is the second-highest, while his 8 yellow cards in the 2021 season ranked him top of the pile. Considering 2021 was a short season where he made 18 appearances, the yellow-card tally may be a bit worrying. A little too much bite? Perhaps the way Tanjong Pagar play factors into that as well – given that 5 of the top 10 yellow card recipients are their players. What is encouraging is that there seems to be some improvement from 2021 to 2022. If you look at the stats below (which include his appearances in the SG Cup), you will see that he was involved in more challenges and attempted more tackles this year compared to last. However, he has only got 1 more yellow card, and conceded fewer fouls (29 to 36), perhaps showing that he is beginning to pick his tackles abit better. Goal Threat Of course, given that the Sailors are also a team that expect to play attacking football and dominate most games we are involved in, passing and attacking stats are worth looking at. Does Rusyaidi pose a goal threat? The simple answer is “No”. He has scored just once in his last 2 seasons. Last season he had an xG of 0.79 and he scored 1 goal, a smart sliding finish in the box against Tampines Rovers (watch at 49 seconds). I’ll give you some food for thought though. Despite not scoring with his long shots, in the past 2 seasons, on occasion, set piece experts such as Raihan Rahman and Luiz Junior have allowed him to take direct free kicks at goal. Perhaps he cracks them in during training and we SPL fans have just not been lucky enough to see his hidden talent? That may be the eternal optimist in me speaking – there’s so far not been any evidence to suggest that goalscoring is one of his abilities. He certainly doesn’t lack confidence though, and on occasion, he cuts in to his weaker foot to strike them from range – so far, none of these have been goals, or even shots that trouble the keeper. Passing Let’s start by getting the obvious out of the way. Rusyaidi is no Shahdan Sulaiman – but who is? That is just an unfair expectation to place on our new signing. Shahdan is one of Singapore’s greatest midfielders and who continues to dominate games even at his age. Shahdan’s passing percentage from last season was a whopping 88%, and he attempted an average of 49 passes per game in the league (double of Rusyaidi’s 24 passes per game). Rusyaidi is not a like-for-like replacement for Shahdan. However, for a guy who is known more as a destroyer, or a box-to-box midfielder, Rusyaidi’s 79% passing accuracy is decent. He has also played 16 key passes, which compares similarly to Shahdan’s 18 key passes in 2022. All-Action Midfielder? I wish InStat gave me information on distance covered by players. I’d imagine that Rusyaidi would score quite highly on that. The eye test tells me that he’s an all-action midfielder and he’s everywhere on the pitch. If we take a look at the heat map data for him, and compare it to that of Shahdan Sulaiman, it’s interesting to note that they both have a bias towards the right-hand side of the pitch. Also, you can clearly see that Rusyaidi is involved a lot more in deeper positions on the pitch – whether this is something that he can adapt to when he joins a more attacking Sailors side, that remains to be seen. Conclusion I think Rusyaidi is an exciting signing. From the eye-test, he is an all-action midfielder who likes to get involved in all areas of the pitch. Tanjong Pagar United was a team that did not dominate the ball as much as the Sailors did last season, and as such, was a team that spent a lot of time on the counter-attack, or defending counter-attacks. Last season, one of the Sailors’ weaknesses I felt was in stopping counter-attacks early, and I feel that Rusyaidi’s bravery in diving into tackles, coupled with what seems to be an improvement in choosing the right moments to tackle, may reap some rewards for the Sailors this year. He has a tendency to really snap into challenges once the opponent has miscontrolled the ball a little – give him a slight opening, and the ball is gone, the attack is snuffed out. That’s what we hope he can bring to us next year. His passing percentage, while not astounding, is decent enough. If he can get the ball to our more dominant ball-players such as Diego Lopes or Hami Syahin, we should still be fine in the attacking department. To end off,