October 20, 2023

It’s been a while since we last saw our Sailors in action. More than 2 weeks ago, we managed to come away with a win in Hong Kong that reinvigorated our slim hopes of making it to the latter rounds of the AFC Champions League. While us supporters have had a chance to really kick back, relax, and bask in the warm glow of the away win, the players have not had such a luxury. Do we rotate and give us the best chance in Korea, or do we try our best to effectively sew up qualification in the Singapore Cup so the last game takes on less significance? 4 Games in 17 Days Of the 25 Lions called up to play the two matches against Guam, 10 were from the Sailors, and 9 featured. The only player who did not see any gametime was Zharfan. This has been a hectic time for these players. Let’s take a look at their schedule since the Kitchee game. 4 October – Kitchee v Sailors 12 October – Singapore v Guam 17 October – Guam v Singapore 21 October – Sailors v Tanjong Pagar Should our national team players feature again, it might be a case of 4 games in 17 days, along with 4 flights as well. That is a tiring schedule, especially taking into account he 13h journeys by air to and from Guam. The likes of Anu, Lionel, CvH, Mamat, Hariss, and Shawal saw significant gametime, and I do wonder if there is some temptation to give a rest to a few of them. However, given the injury and unavailability issues faced by the Sailors, it may not be feasible to rest all of them. One of the key figures that might dictate if people like Anu and Lionel may play is Bailey Wright. He has been out since early-September when he picked up an injury in a closed-door friendly against Albirex. Given that Anu, Lionel, and Hariss played many minutes against Guam and Kitchee, and Bailey hasn’t played at all, it would be ideal to let Bailey play – if he is fit. Is Bailey Fit? Plus Other Injury News Bailey Wright It’s really tough to say. Unlike Singapore’s favourite league, the English Premier League, injury news is very hard to come by as local clubs are often tight-lipped about player injuries and how serious they are. We are thus left to guess based on club training videos – a skill picked up through years of playing Fantasy Football (FF). For those unacquainted, FF is an online game where people pick players from various Premier League teams and sort them into a lineup of 11 players, and these said players then pick up virtual points based on their real-life performances in matches. FF is also a game taken way too seriously by people like myself, which thus results in crazy, irrational behaviour, such as looking for the littlest clues in training videos as to whether a player we picked is injured and will feature at the weekend. So, if you look at the training video below, scroll to around 2:30 and watch on for 10 seconds – you will see that Bailey Wright has resumed pitch training, and crucially, resumed pitch training in a group. However, of course, it must be said that that was a rondo/monkey training drill, which may not involve as much rigour as other drills which were not really shown. Nothing in the video shows Bailey doing anything that would really extend him as well, so it is hard to say if he will feature tomorrow. I guess we’ll see. If you don’t see Bailey, it’s cos his back is turned to the camera. Haha I am a psycho. Same applies for Pedro Henrique. While he cannot play tomorrow because he is not registered in our Singapore Cup squad, Coach Rankovic may be tempted to push one or two of Lionel/Anu/Hariss for the full 90 if he felt that Pedro Henrique was fit and ready to start against Jeonbuk on Wednesday. Kodai Tanaka This one’s not entirely relevant for tomorrow’s game but I just thought I’d comment on it. Kodai was injured on 9 March against Albirex. However, it was not until around the end of the month before he had his surgery. This can be seen from his post on 1 April, where he said he had his surgery two days prior. This is normal for ACL injuries – you cannot operate immediately. According to Dr. Andy Williams, an ACL reconstruction expert, you need to let the swelling go down and for the knee to go “quiet”, if not you risk adding to the trauma and in the long term, you may stiffen up the knee even more. So from 1 April till now, that’s about 6.5 months. You have seen from Kodai’s instagram posts that he has resumed training for quite a while already. While at first it was just solitary gym work, he has returned to the pitch to do solo training, and now he’s back in group training. As to the extent of how intense his training is, we can only guess from his posts and the training video above – but 6-9 mths is the usual timeframe. If you scroll to 4:31 – you will see that in a small-sided game, he comes sliding in to intercept a pass. To me, even though I am not an expert, I think this is a heartening sign. We definitely won’t see him against Tanjong Pagar, but maybe he’ll make it for the Jeonbuk game as a substitute? Let’s see if he travels with the team. It doesn’t seem like there’s any other injury news, so if Ranko is trying to more or less secure qualification tomorrow, this is perhaps a good chance to do it. Going for a Win to Secure Qualification A win will almost certainly put us into the semifinals. It is not mathematically confirmed of course, but let