Once again, Chin Heng takes over the writing of this article, because Eddy was one of the two capos leading chants on matchday, and had his back turned to the action for the whole 90min. Enjoy!
One day Simba will be king, but for now he remains in exile while Scar rules the land.
This was our first home league game in 8 months, and we picked up from where we left off last season with yet another comfortable home win.
As Eddy suggested in his preview article, the Young Lions are indeed a different animal (haha) this season, with plenty of experience in their ranks to complement the young players currently serving their national service. However, this game turned out to be a routine 3-1 win and I felt we dominated the game especially in the first half, as Young Lions simply had no answer to our attacking trio of Bart, Shawal, and Maxime.
The red card just before the break made the second half a little more evenly contested, but credit to the team for dealing with the pressure of playing against an extra man for an entire half. Young Lions managed to pull one back with a good team goal in the 64th minute, and a beautiful cross from Nur Adam late in the game nearly made it 3-2 which would have led to a very nervous final 10 minutes, but fortunately Itsuki Enomoto didn’t have it in him to tap the ball into an open goal from a metre out.
Young Lions are No Pushovers
Despite starting the season with 2 losses, I do expect Young Lions to start picking up points sooner rather than later as they appear to be much more competitive compared to last season. A glance at the half-time and full-time stats reinforces this belief as we see Young Lions having slightly more of the possession even in the first half when it was 11v11 (although they were restricted to just one shot on target).
In the second half they had the lion’s share (hahahaha) of possession and chances with Sailors naturally having to rely on counterattacks after going a man down, but a combination of resolute defending and wasteful finishing meant that the result was never in doubt.
Red Card the Wright Decision?
We were looking extremely comfortable in this game up until the final minutes of the first half, when Bailey Wright was sent off after a foul on Enomoto. A penalty and yellow card was given initially, but a subsequent VAR review showed that the contact was outside the box and a free kick and red card was issued instead.
There was definitely contact on Enomoto so there was no doubt it was a foul, but I am not convinced that this was a straight red. In my (admittedly biased) opinion there was sufficient mitigation with Enomoto going away from goal and 2 covering defenders racing back, but once the decision was made, the team had to adjust accordingly with Hariss dropping back to cover as centre-back once the second half started.
It is rather unfortunate that we have to break up our new centre-back pairing of Bailey and Toni for the next few games after they had looked so solid for the first 2.5 games of the season, but I am sure the rest of the team are more than capable of filling in the gap for our next 2 games against Brunei DPMM and Albirex.
Too Good to be True
While we saw quite a few misplaced passes in the final third last week against Hougang, this game showed Bart, Shawal and Maxime in full flow, with the three of them linking up to devastating effect for all 3 of our goals.
The 1st goal was a pass from Bart to Shawal on the left wing and Shawal’s subsequent cross was met with a brilliant first-time left foot finish from Maxime. The 2nd was more of the same as Bart found Maxime in plenty of space at the edge of the box, before he unselfishly rolled the ball across the box for Shawal to do Shawal things.
I initially thought the 3rd goal went in off a deflection from a Young Lions defender, but after watching the replay it looked like Bart had the last touch. The shot might have been a lucky miskick but I choose to believe Bart deliberately lobbed the keeper with 2 Young Lions players closing down on him. What a finish.
There was definitely no luck involved in the pass from Maxime leading up to the goal though, as he curled a sublime ball from the left wing past the entire Young Lions defence and put it on a plate for Shawal. It really is a privilege to watch him play every week.
We are only 3 games into the season but our attacking trio has been putting up unreal numbers so far, with Bart/Shawal/Maxime averaging 0.67/2.21/1.69 goal involvements (goal or assist) per 90 minutes. If we count secondary assists (the pass to the player creating the assist), these numbers go up to 1.34/2.21/2.03. I am not sure if these incredible figures are sustainable but we will certainly be tracking it as we go deeper into the season, to provide some insights into the Sailors’ attacking output.
Home Comforts
As this was our first home game of the season, I was also looking forward to see how the matchday setup has changed over the past 8 months.
Throughout the evening, I felt discernible minor improvements in the matchday experience: more food choices with 3 food trucks lined up along the road outside Bishan stadium, updated matchday décor at the stadium, new half-time games, a new pre-game video shown on screen all contributed to a more welcoming atmosphere at the stadium. There was also some buzz around the membership booth as everyone wanted to figure out how to get their attendance scanned for the first time.
However, at the merch booth I found myself feeling slightly disappointed, because other than the new jerseys and an update scarf, the rest of the selection at merch booth seemed to be from previous seasons. I was hoping for a more diverse lineup of merch this season, but that is a different discussion for another day.
Conclusion
The Sailors’ home form was incredible last season, with only 1 draw and 1 loss in the league. That was a very high bar but I am confident that we can do even better this season after starting with a solid home win.
It is a pity that we are going for a one month break after just 2 games of the new season, but the team will definitely make good use of this period to continue to gel, and off the pitch the Crew will also find time to work on improvements to our fanbase.
Hopefully by the time we are back in June, we’ll get to see our new forward in action!
Written by Tan Chin Heng
Edited by Eddy Hirono
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