May 6, 2023

You know I don’t actually hate Tampines Rovers or anything, but it’s always funny to see teams slip up in a bad way when they are involved in the title race with your team. Nothing personal, just business. Tampines have been impressive this season, but in their last three games, they have not reached anywhere near the high standards they set for themselves. No goals from open play in 2 of the matches, defensively looking a bit suspect, Boris Kopitovic is the saddest-looking person despite scoring 3 goals in 3 games. All penalties, of course, and he even tried his best to miss one of them. All of this is well and good, and is very funny, and it makes me smile, and it makes the world a better place, but it all will mean nothing though, if the Sailors cannot capitalise on Sunday night. Had Tampines won last night, as they should have, if you believe the bookmakers and pundits (Balestier were at 10-1 odds to win), then they would have opened up a 7-point gap on us with 1 game in hand. As it stands though, they are a much more catchable 4 points away from us. If we win the game in hand, we go to 1 point below them. Not ideal of course, given the disparity between our resources and their resources, but also not fatal, and with time and remaining games to catch up to them. We come up against Geylang though – who are a bit of a bogey team for us. In the last 5 games against Geylang, we have lost 2 and drawn 1. Not good enough at all. The manner of the losses as well was deeply depressing. If you remember those games from last season, we were comprehensively outplayed and Geylang just looked like they were much more up for the fight than we were. But no matter, different season, different outcome perhaps. We swept Geylang aside easily 3-0 barely two months ago, and we will be looking for a repeat. Here are a few key points that I think will decide the game. Who Starts as our U23 Player? With our U23 players all at the SEA Games, we cannot count on any of Abdul Rasaq, Bill or Nur Adam to start the game on Sunday. As such, we are looking at Danish Qayyum as the most likely starter. He has played only 4 minutes this season, coming on as a late sub for us in our season opener against Tanjong Pagar. He came on at left midfield, which is the position that he played most last season with Young Lions. To be honest, I am surprised we have not seen more of him , especially in games where we have a comfortable lead. Anaqi Ismit is also U23, but I believe he is currently injured still, and so is not an option. Another option who may start is Nathan Mao, I guess? After all the fanfare of his 5-min cameo which sparked a lot of debate from people who said that it was just a PR stunt, or that he “did not deserve to break the record”, it would be a strong show of support for him and his burgeoning talent if he were to start in this game. I find this to be unlikely though, given that attacking midfield is an important part of our build-up play, and if he starts, he will come up directly against some really seasoned and good defensive players, such as Rio Sakuma, Takahiro Tezuka, and Josh Pereira. But who knows, maybe a half for him to show what he can do, and then replace him with an experienced player for the second half? One can dream! Zharfan’s Key Role in this Game Some things don’t need to be said – for example, I don’t need to tell you that Maxime Lestienne is a key player for us. He has the most goals (6) and most assists (8) for us, and 14 goal contributions in the first round of the SPL season is insane. He seems to have taken the Player of the Year snub quite personally. Which is good for us. But some other things need to be said. Zharfan will play a key role in this game, and he must be on top form. I’ve mentioned this before in a previous article, but it is pretty worrying that Zharfan has had to make so many saves. We even spoke to him about it in this little interview. A title-contending team should not be giving up that many shots, even if they are from speculative range. This match should see this pattern of him having to make saves continue, because Geylang is a team that loves taking shots. The stats above are taken from spl.sg, and you can see that Yushi Yamaya and Vincent Bezecourt seem to have a shoot-on-sight policy. 53 shots, and of those, 22 are on target. While a good number of these shots have been from long range, they are also getting their shots on target, as can be seen from this table below. Anything could happen from a shot on target, and I hope we can slowly but surely start to work on limiting our opponents and stopping them from taking shots. But if the shots are gonna come in, then Zharfan, we’re gonna need him to have a good game. Keep it simple, no spills, no thrills for us. Who Starts in Attack? With Kodai Tanaka out for the season, and Abdul Rasaq away at the SEA Games, we have only two realistic options when it comes to centre-forward. The first option is Bernie, while the other is Shawal. Bernie has not set the world alight so far, it’s fair to say. And of course, this should be expected given his injury troubles and how long he has been away from professional football. He has shown his physicality thus far, but the sharpness of