March 4, 2023

Pre-game, the club cheekily said in their Instagram post that it was time to do it on a “cold rainy night in Bishan“. For those who may not be familiar with the reference, this is one of English football’s greatest cliches, where if you wanted cast doubt on a foreign signing, you would claim that while he may be a world-beater, you would question if he would be able to “do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke“. The origin of this phrase was from Andy Gray who in 2011 ridiculously claimed that while Messi was a world-class talent, he would not be able to do well in an away game at Stoke, presumably because the physicality of the Stoke players, and awful weather conditions would combine to nullify Messi. DPMM Playing Like Stoke? Enough with the history lesson. If there was any team that was going to be Stoke-like last night, it certainly wasn’t the Sailors. DPMM, making their comeback to the SPL were physical and robust all night, fighting and scrapping hard to try to wrestle some control of the game. In some ways, it was pretty admirable to watch, given that they managed to pump themselves up for the fight when they had not played a high-level competitive league game for three years. I had the privilege of speaking to Coach Adrian Pennock after the game, and he gave praise to his players for their attitude. He also said he was filled with enthusiasm after the performance especially because he was dealing with some injuries in the squad, and also because key midfielder Josip Balic was out. However, even though it pains me to say this because Coach Pennock was such a gent in the post-match interview, the fans (myself included) did get mighty pissed off by the time-wasting antics of the Bruneians in the first half before the goal went in. The keeper seemed to take an age with every goal kick. He Pickford-ed at every opportunity (do yourself a favour and check it up on youtube to see what I mean – but basically this means a keeper wasting time by dramatically falling onto the ball and taking a long time to get up even though it is a routine save). In fact, he wasted so much time that at one goal kick, a small boy in the stands behind me shouted “What’s wrong with this goalkeeper? He take one kick take 50 years ah?” Kids say the darndest things, don’t they – but in this case he wasn’t exactly off the mark. Perhaps if we can have some sympathy for them, this is their first competitive game in a while, and Coach Pennock also referred to the fatigue suffered by his players, especially in the second half, so maybe they were just trying to slow the pace of the game down a little. Still doesn’t make all that diving and time-wasting OK, but oh well we got the win, so, moving on. Defensive Frailty? Much like the Tanjong Pagar game, there is a bit of a worry within me watching our Sailors play because while we look to be in control for large parts of the game, when we come under some pressure, it really seems like a sense of panic spreads within the team, and this period of pressure becomes a little sustained. We then have to rely on excellent goalkeeping, or last-ditch tackles to really try and keep our opponents out. Last night, the goal came from an error by Zharfan Rohaizad, who up till then had been pretty decent. He was called upon to save a few shots, and he did that well. He was also good with distribution too. However, the error was a glaring one as he passed the ball straight to Varankow and this eventually led to a goal. I think this happens sometimes when we play out from the back, and I liked that Coach Risto played down the error when he said – Zharfan had a decent game otherwise, especially considering the wet conditions. He made saves when he had to, clung on to some of the crosses well, and although I am sure he will not be happy with his overall performance, it is definitely something to build on. Defensively, I thought Lionel Tan had a great game and he seemed to crunch into many challenges, getting on the nerves of the DPMM players, who repeatedly got into verbal tussles with him. He was involved in 15 challenges, and won 11 of them. Impressively, he only gave away one foul despite his front-foot approach towards defending which led to him sometimes being pulled out of his favoured central-defensive position. Also impressive was his 93% passing completion rate with 54 passes played – a high percentage considering one of the often-held criticisms about him is his lack of ball-playing ability. Anu won 82% of his challenges as well, and was generally untroubled until a spell in the second half, where the whole team seemed to lose composure for a little bit. In our post-match interview with Hami Syahin, he mentioned that there will inevitably be times in a game where the players lack a little focus, or the opponents look to be dominant in attack, but the team would rely on Hariss to calm them down and help them remain composed. I have to admit that from my perspective in the stands, it really did seem that the period before DPMM’s goal already showed us hints that DPMM were going to trouble the scoresheet soon – so I am not so sure that the composure was really visible to us fans. Why the apparent sudden defensive frailty in the 2nd half? Frankly I cannot tell. I’ve already tasked Zach to look into this, and hopefully he will have some answers for us in the Tactical Analysis piece that should come out in the next few days! Quick Thinking Makes the First Goal Before I