June 2023

All season long, we’ve been asking for a solid defensive performance, and more control in our games, and that is exactly what we got on Sunday night. It was a long day for some of us in the Crew because we had to get up bright and early at 7am to go down to Mattar Road for the Tasek Sailors charity event. We will be writing a fuller article on that sometime soon to talk abit more about the day and of course, the wonderful initiative that is the Tasek Sailors. In any case, we played in the corporate tournament and managed to advance to the Quarter-Finals, but were then knocked out by a solitary goal. Congrats to Deloitte for winning the tournament! So after a full day of baking in the sun, we made the trip down to Bishan Stadium, a little tired and hoping the team would give us all a lift with their performance. They did that, and in very handsome fashion – just look at this. Hougang only managed 1 shot all game, and when you look at the shots chart, it further highlights our dominance. Nazrul Nazari’s shot (in red) from far out was their only attempt all night, and it was comfortable for Zharfan. There was another near-miss when old boy Gabriel Quak did excellently to beat Nur Adam on the right flank and put in a decent cross, which was eventually deflected onto the post by Super, but other than that, Hougang hardly troubled us at all. Adam Swandi’s advanced position Unlike in many games this season where Adam Swandi was played at the base of midfield alongside Hami Syahin, this game saw Adam operate much further forward, in line with Maxime and Diego. There was very fluid interchanging of positions between the three of them, and Hougang struggled to cope. When we spoke to Lionel Tan after the game, he also had very nice things to say about Adam Swandi playing higher up the field. Of course, the results don’t lie. Adam had two goals, and an assist, and if not for the crossbar, would have had a hattrick. Adam doesn’t get many goals – even when he was an integral part of Albirex’s title-winning squad in 2018 (he clinched Young Player of the Year as they went unbeaten all season), he only scored 4 goals in all competitions. In some of our earlier posts, we had also addressed the squad being a little reliant on Maxime and Diego. It is thus heartening to see different players step up. In this game, we scored 3 goals, and only one had involvement from Maxime / Diego, with Maxime picking up the assist for the 3rd goal. I will leave the detailed tactical analysis to Zach – hopefully he can explain in a little more detail why it worked so well. I can see why Adam Swandi was deployed deep, because his confidence on the ball could help us to get out of tight areas and hold the ball and make us a bit more press-resistant, but it was definitely refreshing and nice to see him trying more stuff on the ball as a direct consequence of him being in an advanced position. Long may this continue. Clean Sheet + Magnificent Anu It was just our 4th clean sheet of the season, after 15 games played. It was a well-deserved one, and I think a lot of credit goes not just to the back 4, but also to Anu, who once again had a great match in the middle of the park. He continued his good form from the games he played for the national team during the international break, and was constantly snapping into challenges, and always in the right place to break up any attack from Hougang. Hougang’s talisman Kiki Krajcek had a very rare off-day, and alot of credit for that has to go to Anu. On top of doing his defensive duties, he used the ball well. In particular, there was a moment in the first half where he played such a good dink into the box for Diego to create a chance for Maxime, which Maxime uncharacteristically wasted. If you look at Anu on the ball here, there really isn’t much on for him, and I thought he may have gone for the slightly easier ball over to the right hand side of the pitch where Hafiz Nor was in space – but he proved me wrong and played it over the top for Diego. In a match where our opponents were content to sit back – it was important for Anu to be a little more ambitious. No Coach Risto I did say in the preview that I was a little apprehensive. I think sacking a coach mid-season will do that for your nerves. However, I think this was the perfect performance to help ease some of those nerves. I hope the players and fans are not getting carried away – after all last season’s first game after Coach Kim left saw us beat Young Lions 10-1 in a record-breaking victory. Also, Hougang were really there for the taking, and for large periods of the game, it felt like a training exercise of attack v defence. The fact that Hougang missed both Shahdan and Zulfahmi in midfield probably contributed to that. However, taking away all of Hougang’s flaws on the day, I think there was a lot more structure and intention in the way we built from the back – something that I hope once again that Zach will help to explain in further detail. To my relatively untrained eye (compared to Zach), it looked like the centrebacks were pushed a bit wider in the build-up, the full-backs held the width in attack almost like wingers, while Lestienne, Diego, and Adam Swandi were allowed a nice little platform in the middle of the pitch to combine with each other to devastating effect. It was a very controlled

Two 1-1 draws in a row against Young Lions. That was the record we had going into this game. Completely unacceptable for a club of our stature, no matter how well the Young Lions played, especially if you take into account the constraints they have. I had an interesting discussion with someone in our SFT Telegram chat after the preview was released. A concerned group member asked if I was perhaps being a little too dismissive towards Young Lions’ chances, given that they had scored more goals recently (actually just in one game, they fired blanks before that game for consecutive games), the Sailors were playing back-to-back games and may thus turn to their depth on the bench, Súper was injured, etc etc. I love it when readers give feedback on the Telegram chat – it shows me someone is reading, and it also makes it less of a one-way process? It is good I think to hear back from readers on what they feel. It allows me to ponder the articles I write, and what kind of information they would like to see. “Insider information” has been suggested by many readers and friends, but I always assure them that even if I ever had insider information (which I don’t), it’s always club over self – I’d never put something out to generate clicks if it was not information meant to be public knowledge. But yeah please keep the feedback coming in the telegram chats, Instagram DMs, or whatever floats your boat! Back to the question posed by the reader – was I underestimating the Young Lions? My answer was quite simple – you can see it below – The reason for the confidence was really because despite the two 1-1 draws, there should be no excuses for our Sailors. Short turnaround time? Well the Young Lions played one day before us, additional 24 hours rest does make a difference, of course, but we have bench players who would be key players for their first team. If Rusyaidi Salime, Bill Mahmadou and Haiqal Pashia were available for the Young Lions, they’d play every minute of every game. Arshad Shamim is the starkest illustration – I really like him, but he came on for 2min, and just last season he was a mainstay in the Young Lions team. These players came on for a total of 42 min in the game – Bill didn’t even see the pitch. The strength in depth is just simply incomparable – just look at the two benches and you’ll see that they couldn’t even get 9 subs. I am not shitting on Young Lions, and I always sympathise with them because alot of factors are out of their control, such as whether they can train with certain players due to NS obligations, whether certain players can be released for games, what is the condition of the players when they do turn up for training and games, the fact that they play with 2 foreigners and no senior players while other teams have veterans and foreign players – it will take a whole article or even a novella to cover the problems Young Lions face. Perhaps you can take a look at an excerpt from this excellent Straits Times article about Daniel Goh, when he mentions his stint during NS. How to excel for Young Lions like that? It is no wonder that Daniel Goh’s form now is so much better than it was last time. Second Gear – Finally Some Control Back to the game, the Sailors did not even have to exit second gear to win this game. They were off to the races early and by half-time had a 3-goal lead. While the first goal was unlucky for the Young Lions, the next 2 goals came because the Sailors were hungry and a lot less cautious than they were in the previous 2 games, actively trying to force mistakes from the Young Lions. The second half honestly just seemed like a damage limitation exercise from the Young Lions while the Sailors seemed to ease off considerably once we got the 4th goal. A well-taken volley by Kobayashi in the final minutes meant there was a bit of angst at the lack of a clean sheet, but it was still a commanding win, and for the first time in a while, we were not anxious moving into the final minutes. In fact, it was our first comfortable victory (victory by more than a 1-goal margin) since the beginning of April, when we comfortably beat Hougang 5-0. I had previously bemoaned the lack of control we have in our games, even in our wins, as compared to Tampines, for example, who seem to pass the game to a slow death once they have the lead (unless of course Yasir Hanapi decides to get himself sent off wheeeee) – so to essentially play the whole second half as a training session was good for my nerves honestly. On an unrelated note – can you imagine how fricking exciting it is to be a Balestier Khalsa fan? 77 goals in 14 games. 34 scored, 43 conceded. That’s 5.5 goals a match to watch. Absolute value for money I tell you. The Sailors are close behind by the way – just that of course Sailors conceding goals doesn’t make me excited, it just makes me sad. Sailors have scored 39 and conceded 23 for a total of 62 goals in 14 games. 4.43 goals a game. Sailors, please make it less exciting, please please concede fewer goals. No Clean Sheet I don’t know if it annoyed you – but it certainly annoyed me that we didn’t keep a clean sheet against Young Lions. I referenced the 5-0 win against Hougang at the start of April as our last comfortable victory. That was also the last time we kept a clean sheet. It’s been more than 2 months. I posed the question to Anu post-match to see if

In the last post-match thoughts, I complained about how there was chaos, and our defence looked so fragile. Well Wednesday’s night game surely saw a huge improvement in that regard. It must be said that some of the shots stats may be inflated by the fact that Tampines had to play half an hour with 10 men after Yasir got sent off. However, even before the red card, we never really looked in danger and the stats above bear that out. 6 shots and 2 on target is a stark improvement from the 15 shots we conceded to them when we faced them at Our Tampines Hub. Let’s address some of the thoughts I had about the game. Defence-First Policy It is no secret that Coach Risto was mighty pissed off at how we defended against Balestier. The way we set up against Tampines was definitely a reaction to that. I mentioned in the preview that Abdul Rasaq may play an important role dropping back into midfield to try and limit Kyoga’s influence, and that is something that was a huge part of our play against Tampines. We really did show them a lot of respect, and tried to stop them from dominating the ball too easily and getting the ball into the final third. I would elaborate more but I don’t think I can describe it better than how Rhysh Roshan Rai did in his Twitter post (and his ensuing exchange with our legend Stipe Plazibat), so let’s just dive right into it. Look at that cute baby. I gotta say I really miss Stipe, and I wonder how he would have done in the current Sailors setup, and how he would have done instead of Kim Shin-Wook last season. It’s also so nice to see that he remains a Sailors fan, Stipe if you’re reading this please come back and visit! But ok I digress. In the interesting exchange between Stipe and Rhysh, one thing they definitely agree on is that this setup works on defence. I don’t think it’s surprising that Coach Risto went for something much more defensively solid this time, and we really succeeded in keeping Tampines out of their beloved central areas, and stopped them from passing us to death in our own half. That’s a huge positive. Kudos to Diego and Rasaq for sticking dutifully to their defensive work. I also thought Anu had one of his better games this season, returned to his natural defensive midfielder role – snapping into challenges, and really using his physicality against some of the smaller Tampines players. Of course, my man of the match was Súper. He made interception after interception as Tampines was forced to try slightly riskier entry passes than usual. He also kept Boris Kopitovic very quiet all night, and of course, he was fouled by Yasir for the second bookable offence, so his impact on this game is really huge. That moment where he bailed Hariss out after Boris tackled our captain will really stick in the mind. What a moment – as good as a goal. Was the Balance Right? But as Stipe alluded to in his responses, was the balance right in what was a game we really wanted to win? Stipe isn’t alone in having these thoughts – when we interviewed Sailors fan Bryan after the game, he felt that having established a solid defensive platform, we needed to turn up the pressure a little bit and get more on the attack. This was a game where it was vital to get the first goal. Faris Ramli managed to crack one in from long range (glorious goal, btw), and that threw our gameplan out the window a little. I think the plan was always to sit tight, break, get a goal and then manage the game from there out. We have Yasir to thank I think, for his rash challenge which put his team in a poor position. Had he not been sent off, I do wonder if we could have been picked off on the counter-attack as we went out of our shells a little to chase the game. But with the man advantage, I felt that we didn’t do enough to really press it home. I think it says a lot about Bernie that in a game where we really needed a goal, and Rasaq had to come off injured, that he wasn’t even sent to warm up, and ultimately, was not brought on. Could he be injured? If he is so injured that he can’t even play 10min in a game, then I wonder what’s the point of including him on the bench. Considering that our gameplan near the end of the game was to swing crosses into the box to put Tampines under some pressure, would a big burly forward like Bernie not at least help to create some panic amongst the Tampines ranks? I think we missed a good opportunity at the end to make it a little bit more difficult for them. Maybe a cheeky last 5min with Lionel Tan upfront would have helped too! (throwback to Jorge Felipe scoring a late late goal against Young Lions 2 years back) Was it a Penalty? I have to admit that when I first saw it, it did not look like a penalty to me. Instinctively, I also felt like it could not have been a clear and obvious error from the referee (who did not give the penalty), so when there was a VAR check, I assumed it would not result in a penalty. But wow – when Taqi jogged over to the screen to do an on-field review, we started celebrating in the stands. All football fans know by now – when the referee runs over to the screen, it usually results in him reversing his initial call. Having watched the challenge by Faris from another angle though – I think it is a clear penalty. Faris goes into a challenge he’s