[Preview] Sailors v Young Lions – No Pushovers

As our Sailors get ready to take on the Young Lions, it’s a very different Young Lions from last season, but yet there will be a strange sense of familiarity. Nur Adam, Jonan, Danish Qayyum, and Khairin Nadim, were all just with LCS before their National Service obligations kicked in. Does this make the Young Lions game easier or harder for us? We’ll explore that in this article.

On a random note, that’s Simba from The Lion King in the cover photo. If Young Lions is Simba, then who is Mufasa (the kind King who got killed), and who is Scar (the jealous brother of the King who got the King killed so that he could take his place)? Are we Scar? Is Mufasa Home United? Ooof that hits too close to home. Ok I digress. On to the preview.

Same Same But Different

The Young Lions are not the same proposition as they were last season. I could write long paragraphs about it, but these tweets from Deepanraj Ganesan sum it up very well.

Not the same team as last season at all. They now have more familiar names than usual seasons, plus a smattering of quality from foreign lands. Take a look at last week’s lineup.

Aside from goalkeeper Travis Ang and the foreigners, every single name in there is someone who has played SPL football before, or is familiar to us. Even on the bench, you see players like Khairin Nadim and Danish Qayyum, who have experience playing in this league before. It’s not gonna be the usual Young Lions experience, where there are newbies everywhere you look. There’s even 3 title-winners in there (Kaisei Ogawa, Jun Kobayashi, Kan Kobayashi).

At this point I have to remind yall that even though there were newbies left right centre in the last 2 seasons we faced Young Lions, we drew with them TWICE. UGH.

The experience of the boys playing, added to the foreigners will make them a much harder outfit to beat this time. They were unlucky to lose in their opener to DPMM. DPMM’s keeper Naumovski had a great game, and one save in particular from livewire Farhan Zulkifli was particularly impressive, given that the move had “Goal” written all over it.

So if DPMM is touted by some as a dark horse for the title, and Young Lions almost held/beat them, then I don’t think we should be taking them lightly at all.

The Boys from LCS

Nur Adam is definitely no stranger to us. He has played 57 times for the Sailors in the past few years, and has always been a fan favourite, marauding up and down the left flank. His talents were on full display for the Young Lions last weekend, and he was involved in a fair few attacking moves.

Further upfield, Jonan was used in a right-wing role. We only saw him come on for 2 cameos last season, but I remember being impressed by his confidence and directness, especially in the 3-0 victory over Balestier Khalsa. He lasted 1 half last week but some of his touches looked really good, so it would be nice to see him again.

Danish Qayyum (1 min) and Khairin Nadim (0 min) have not seen much gametime at all for the senior Sailors, but these 4 should still know a thing or two about their opponents this weekend. Knowing them and stopping them is two different things though – and you would expect that in a game like this, the goalkeeper for Young Lions will be very important.

Travis Ang was also a former Sailors academy player, and he will be disappointed with the concession of last week’s equaliser to DPMM. It was a tight angle for the forward, but he managed to squeeze a shot in at the near post, just beyond Travis’s dive. Not a howler – but he would have felt he could have done better.

He doesn’t have much SPL experience, so I think the Sailors will want to put as much pressure on him as possible, from every conceivable situation. Crosses, setpieces, through balls in the space between the centre-back and the keeper – let’s try to maximise the chances of mistakes happening.

Enomoto – The Spearhead

I can’t say I know too much about Enomoto, but I like what I saw from him in pre-season. He can score, he has a bit of presence about him (186cm), and with him on the pitch, Young Lions do not look as toothless as they have done in recent years.

In terms of CV, he has easily the most impressive one, given that he featured quite regularly in J3 football in Japan, and also featured in J2. His goalscoring record there wasn’t stellar though – only managing 9 goals in 78 appearances.

What is remarkable about him is that he won many aerial duels when he featured in J3, featuring in the 91st percentile league-wide of aerial duels won despite not featuring as regularly as regular starters from other clubs.

Given his aerial prowess, this should be a challenge that Bailey and Toni will be looking forward to!

Conclusion

I think our Sailors should have too much for the Young Lions, despite them strengthening very well. I think the Young Lions are not going to finish bottom this year, but I would still be very surprised if the Sailors firepower isn’t enough to overcome this challenge. Rui Pires looks to be back in training as well, I wonder if he will feature at some point.

Our last 2 games have seen us barely break a sweat, and it looks like some connections are still in the process of being formed. Still, the Young Lions team look like they always have a mistake or two in them, and I think the Sailors attack has enough firepower to punish any errors.

My predicted line-up –

Zharfan Rohaizad

Lionel Tan, Bailey Wright, Toni Datkovic, Obren Kljajic

Song, Hariss, Hami

Maxime, Shawal, Bart

COME ON YOU BOYS IN BLUE!

Score Prediction

Joseph and I predict the scores and track our success in a table. Stay tuned to find out who is the prediction king!

3 points for exact scoreline predicted correctly, 2 points for predicting the winner and margin of victory correctly (but not the exact scoreline), and 1 point for predicting the outcome correctly (win, lose or draw).

Eddy’s prediction: Sailors 4 YL 2

Joseph’s prediction: Sailors 4 YL 1

Written by Eddy Hirono

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