July 2024

Without question, the worst performance I’ve ever seen Hougang put in against us. And yes, that includes the 9-4 drubbing a few years back. I remember at 6-1, I turned to a fan in the stands and went – I think this could hit double digits. That we didn’t hit double digits is to no credit of Hougang’s – we simply eased off a little, and also could have been a little sharper with some of our finishing and decision-making. Hougang is a team in big trouble and for the sake of the league, I hope they fix things soon. If you’re wondering – hey, didn’t they just beat Albirex? Yes, they did, but Albirex is in even bigger trouble. Another story for another day. Here’s some of my post-match thoughts. Setpiece Horror As predicted in the preview, Bailey was gonna score from a setpiece. This happened in the first half off a Maxime Lestienne corner kick. This also happened in the second half when Toni Datkovic rose highest to head home from another Maxime Lestienne corner kick. For both goals, the defending was so poor. Where was the marking, and why was Ensar Bruncevic not jumping to compete? You know it’s bad when even opposition fans are frustrated on behalf of Hougang fans. The goals from Bailey and Toni mean that Hougang has now conceded 8 goals from set pieces this season, the highest in the league. Bailey is on 3 goals this season – 7 more to hit his season’s target! Also, I know it’s not a setpiece goal but I will comment on it here because it’s a headed goal. As good as Shawal’s goal was – please take a look at the replay. He had so much space he could have set up a shop, or maybe even a whole shopping centre there. How can you leave him alone in the box? Just mind-boggling, especially when you consider that he was on their books for 3 years, so they should know exactly what he is capable of. While the Hougang team may be in a terrible state, credit must be given to the fans, who kept singing for most of the match, but quite understandably faded off nearing the end of the game. For the sake of their fans, I hope Hougang bucks up. Lennart Thy Man of the Match Lennart Thy was given the Man of the Match award, and I think it was well-deserved. There may be some debate about this considering he did miss 2 big chances. In the post-match interview, he admitted this as well, saying he should have had 4 or 5 goals. I too, think that he should have scored more in this game – but I would like to use the following paragraphs to once again state how much I admire his selflessness and his teamplay. Strikers are usually selfish, and look to pass as a last resort – but look at the lead-up to the 7th goal. Once he got the ball and saw Haiqal Pashia making a good run ahead of him, without a second thought he played a brilliant through pass into the open space on his WEAK FOOT. The vision, ability and willingness to do that is amazing. He then got his reward a few moments later when he continued running to support the attack, and when Maxime and Pashia made a right mess of a presentable scoring opportunity, he was there to reverse a shot on his left foot past Zaiful Nizam. As for the two big chances he missed? Well, he should be putting those away, and while that’s negative, a positive is that he is even getting these chances. Let’s take a look at the English Premier League’s stat for big chances missed. You might see a few familiar names in there. Well, surely noone is saying that Erling Haaland is a poor striker? I think the jury is still out on Lennart as a finisher, but the big consolation is that he’s still very much a team player who offers so much more than just goals. He has 4 goals, 3 assists, and 1 secondary assist in his 8 matches with us. For someone who’s had a supposedly slow start, I think those are already very encouraging stats. While there may be some who say that a striker’s goal is to get goals, I think the main goalscoring threats in this team are clearly Maxime and Shawal. If Lennart Thy’s selfless teamwork allows those two to bang in the goals, then I won’t be complaining. Regardless, I’m sure there’s more to come from him, and more chances for the Crew to belt out the truly awful Lennart Thy chant (sung to the tune of the chorus of Wa Meng Ti). If you are curious about what the lyrics are …. Lennart Thy, Lennart Thy, From Eredivisie, Number 9 from Germany, On a goalscoring spree! Lennart Thy’s First Goal was Offside A little funny that I just sang his praises and now I am looking to convince you that his 1st goal was offside. But it clearly was offside. First, you can see here that both Shawal and Song are in an offside position when Lennart hits the ball towards goal. Shawal is far from the action so is irrelevant, but Song is right in front of Zaiful, slightly to his left. The shot also comes through Song. He literally hops over it. If I were a Hougang fan, I’d be livid about this. As a Sailors fan, it is still mildly annoying because you just know one day it’s gonna be us on the end of such a shitty decision. What is the point of VAR if even with the benefit of replays and some time to think, you don’t come to the right decision? Conclusion There’s not much else to say here. Everyone had a good game, but Hougang were so poor I am not sure we can glean

The thing that struck me most from this match is Maxime on two occasions very deliberately passing the ball back to his teammates for them to shoot and score. First, Song Ui-Young, and then Lennart Thy. On both occasions, Maxime could well have finished off the chance himself, but he decided to set up his teammate. It made me feel like something has shifted. Although Maxime has never been an unselfish player (he finished last season with 21 assists), these two very deliberate acts of service can’t help but make me feel he’s embraced his role as one of the leaders of the team – it was a Michael Jordan moment essentially. Let me dive into that and more in my post-match thoughts. Maxime Lestienne x Michael Jordan The year is 1989. Phil Jackson took over a Chicago Bulls team that was performing well, but had never won the Championship. The Chicago Bulls had the brightest star in all of basketball, Michael Jordan. He was the scoring leader of the league as well, but yet the Bulls didn’t win a championship. Teams like the Detroit Pistons came up with the “Jordan Rules”, which basically meant that they doubled up on him and beat the shit out of him. When Phil Jackson arrived, he spoke with Jordan and told him that in order for the Bulls to win the Championship, he might have to sacrifice being top-scorer. Jackson would institute the “triangle”, which meant that the ball would move quickly between all players of the team, not just Jordan. The ball would be kept moving, so it would be more difficult for teams to just target Jordan. For this to happen, Jordan would have to trust his teammates, and also actively get them into play and involve them more. We know how this ends. Michael Jordan does indeed score less, and his ball-handling percentages went down too, but he won 6 Championships with the Bulls. Jordan’s (and Jackson’s) time with the Chicago Bulls makes for a fascinating read, but for the sake of brevity, I shan’t elaborate more. Basically, the rest of his teammates get involved more and become legends in their own right. The parallels are obvious. Maxime Lestienne is far and away the best player in the league, but he will feel that he hasn’t won enough titles. And I feel like something clicked in his mind after the humiliation of the Tampines game. He must have felt like for the duration of that game, he was on an island, alone and separated from the rest of his teammates. Don’t take my word for it, look at how long he had to hold up the ball for Song to arrive on the scene, before he squared it to Song for him to finish. Look at how the angle was perfect for a left-footer to caress into the far post once Lennart Thy played the pass to Max. On both occasions, it made sense for Max to shoot. Even if he had missed, noone would have accused him of being selfish. But that’s why I ascribe so much significance to these moments. Context is all-important as well. I will break each chance down and go deeper into the context. Song Ui-Young Song has not been on his best form this season – far from it. He is less assured in possession, and while he still runs around like a Tasmanian devil (the Looney Tunes one) causing havoc wherever he goes, it has been less effective than Home United fans will remember. He may be struggling with his injury a little still, it may be psychological, noone knows. But something is not quite right and the team would definitely benefit from a Song that is firing on all cylinders. Song had one brilliant move in the game where he beat Kan Kobayashi to the ball, chested it down, shielded the ball aggressively, and then curled a brilliant through pass behind the defensive line with his weaker foot. This eventually led to a goal for Maxime when Shawal expertly set him up at the edge of the area, but there was no doubt that Song truly excelled here. However, earlier in the game, Song missed an absolute sitter. It is surely an early contender for Miss of the Season. Chris van Huizen whipped a low cross into the corridor of uncertainty between the centreback and the goalkeeper, and Song was right there to take advantage in front of an open goal. From the above position, he only managed to scuff it back towards the keeper. A shocking miss. You add that to his ongoing struggles with his injury and form, and you begin to see why Maxime might have held on to the ball for so long to pass to Song. He knew the goal was the bare minimum that Song needed to not feel like absolute shit after the game. Song’s lack of a celebration after the goal is telling as well – he realised that he should have scored far earlier than that when the score was 1-0 and the game was still in the balance. Lennart Thy I have spoken about Thy’s struggles before. I have always maintained that Lennart Thy is a good player who will really elevate the team. Goals-wise he may be struggling now, but I think we will see his true value come the continental games when we go up against stronger opponents. That is where attributes like tenacity, grit, and sheer dog-like hard work will come to the fore. But the fans are not the only ones who think that Lennart Thy should score more. Lennart himself thinks it, and his teammates think it too. When we spoke with Toni Datkovic post-match, it was interesting that he said that while Lennart has been playing well, all strikers are affected when they don’t get goals. He also said that’s probably why Maxime so unselfishly set him up for a goal – he wanted Lennart

Once again, Chin Heng takes over the writing of this article, and he lends his unique statistical analytical mind to the page. Enjoy! I am kinda glad I don’t have to comment on this trainwreck of a game. I could save myself a few minutes by copying-and-pasting some paragraphs from the last few Post-Match articles because we once again witnessed a Sailors performance that left much to be desired, except this time we were up against a team that actually had the quality to punish us. This was set to be a very close encounter on paper, with Sailors and Tampines having identical records on multiple fronts coming into the game – both teams had 6 wins and a draw (beating every other team in the league except Geylang), and had scored 24 goals (8 in the 1st half, 16 in the 2nd half, 3 set piece goals). However, the final score was anything but close. It was a disastrous performance by the Sailors but as they say, you can only beat what’s in front of you, Tampines still had to do their part and the result was a resounding 5-0 victory in Gavin Lee’s first ever win against coach Rankovic. Tampines were the better team and deserved the win for sure, but I felt that they were definitely not better by 5 goals. Be Careful What You Wish For Coach Rankovic mentioned during the pre-match interview that he hoped the referee would ‘let things go and let the game flow’, and he got what he wished for in the 3rd minute when Boris Kopitovic left his trailing foot in a challenge with Zharfan, resulting in his heel striking Zharfan on the face. The referee didn’t even give a card initially, but after a VAR review, settled on a yellow card to Kopitovic. In my opinion, this was clearly a deliberate action by Kopitovic to leave his foot in, either in an attempt to earn his 97th penalty of the season or to leave a hole in Zharfan’s face. However, since he didn’t achieve either goal, I agree there wasn’t quite enough in it to warrant a red. It’s a close one though, and I suspect that if the referee had given a red initially, the VAR would not have overturned the decision either. Nevertheless, I’d like to state that this is not an excuse for our loss. Red or no red doesn’t seem to matter when you put in such a bad performance. On that note, we can’t help but wonder if the Sailors could have made a difference to the result by engaging in similar tactics to stamp our authority on the game, going a little harder into each challenge, or leaving a foot in here and there, just to show the other team that we are there. There’s no right answer to this of course, a mistimed attempt could easily leave us playing the rest of the game with 10-men as well. There’s just something about watching the other team pass pretty patterns around but us not doing much to leave our mark on them. Change in Formation The Sailors lined up with 5 at the back this game, after making 4 changes from the win against Balestier, with Anu, Hafiz, Lionel, and Shawal coming in for Adam Swandi, Chris, Hami, and Song. For the first 40 mins, this all seemed to work as each of the 3 centre backs were winning their individual battles, putting in important blocks and tackles to contain the variety of attacking threats coming from Boris Kopitovic, Seia Kunori, Faris Ramli, and Glenn Kweh. Then came the disaster in a span of 10 or so minutes either side of half-time. Tampines scored 2 goals in quick succession at the stroke of half-time, first from Boris Kopitovic after a well-timed run to beat the offside trap, followed by a Glenn Kweh tap-in after Zharfan inexplicably spilled the ball on the goal-line, straight onto Glenn’s foot. Changes were made at half-time as we switched to 4 at the back with Song coming in for Lionel to chase the game, but seemed to have no effect as 3 more quick goals by the 55th minute left the Sailors shell shocked. Glenn Kweh beat Sergio a little too easily down the right on the 47th minute before squaring the ball for Kopitovic to finish, then former Sailor Faris Ramli received the ball wide on the left and cut in to finish into the bottom corner on 49, before Irfan Najeeb wrapped up the game through an open header from a corner kick on 55. There is an argument to be made that all 5 goals were down to our mistakes, something that I am sure the team will examine closely back on the training ground. Positives You would have to dig very hard to find positives from a 5-0 loss, but I think there may still be a silver lining or two to be found. There has been some criticism directed at Song in recent weeks as he did not seem to be performing at the same levels as he did before he left in 2023, but in this game we saw glimpses of the old Song. It may have been due to the scoreline, but he appeared to be fired up, ready to take on defenders and chase loose balls like he used to. Not quite where he wants to be I’m sure, but a commendable effort nonetheless. We also saw Rui Pires coming back from injury to finally make his SPL debut, after playing exclusively in the ACL last season due to the foreigner restrictions in the league. As Eddy mentioned in his preview article, we once again showed a lack of willingness to play the ball through midfield in this game, restricting our options when going forward, but the introduction of Rui did seem to help a little on this front as he showed some effort to orchestrate the play in midfield

Was it a vintage Sailors performance? No. Do I care? Yes, a little. Is it important that we head into Thursday’s top-of-the-table clash with Tampines Rovers at least level on points? Hell yeah definitely. This late result against Balestier Khalsa came right after a laboured performance against Tanjong Pagar, which also came right after a laboured performance against Geylang International. I think we should be a little worried – let’s talk about some of the observations from the game. Class from Kodai Before we talk about the not-so-good stuff, let’s get the good stuff out of the way. We spoke about Kodai’s return, we wondered whether he might get on the scoresheet, and also whether he might celebrate wildly against us. Well, he did celebrate when the Ismail Sassi decided he was prime Thierry Henry and scored a superb curled equaliser past Zharfan, but it was nothing disrespectful. Where his class really shone through was somewhere in the 55th minute of the game (watch from 55:12), when Hami Syahin cynically pulled Riku Fukashiro back on the counter-attack and deservedly got a yellow card. What followed next was Riku swung an elbow at Hami (and missed), and then gave him a shove too. Quite how Riku didn’t at least see a yellow card for this, I will never know – but the refereeing for this game was quite strange. Importantly though, with tensions rising, we then saw Kodai hug Hami and bring him away from his irate teammate. Irate teammate – unnecessary rhyme in the middle of the article? Check. It was an action that immediately helped to defuse the tension. If that hadn’t happened, I am not sure we’d have seen both Riku and Hami remaining on the field. He recognised he was one of the few players who could have played peacemaker there given his history with the Sailors, and used it to prevent further drama. Class. In a post-match post on Instagram, he also expressed thanks to the Sailors fans for chanting his name at the final whistle when he came over to shake hands with the Sailors staff. Those at the stadium would also have seen him bow towards us in the stands. As supporters, it’s little gestures like these that really provide the feel-good factor from games. Some members of the Crew had always dropped in to check on him during his lengthy injury absence, made gifts for him, etc, so it feels nice when the good feelings are acknowledged. The Penalty Call at the End Riku Fukashiro seemed to be at the centre of everything good that Balestier did, and with the score at 4-2 in the 8th minute of added-on time, it looked like Balestier was gonna get a penalty when Haiqal Pashia’s high tackle seemed to connect with Riku in the box. See it for yourself here. You can also hear the loud calls from the Sailors fans politely urging Riku Fukashiro to refrain from speaking any further. To me, this is a tough one, but I can imagine if it happened at the other end, I would think it’s a penalty. Going by that test – I think the ref got this wrong. Haiqal Pashia went in for the tackle, didn’t touch the ball, and contacted Riku a little. How much exactly? To be honest it’s not easy to tell with the camera angles, but I think given the height of the tackle, I would have given it. It capped a frustrating night for Riku. Besides the incident referred to above where Kodai played peacemaker, Riku also received a ridiculous yellow card for a nothing tackle on Shawal Anuar a few minutes earlier. While Balestier can feel hard done by, and may have had a penalty, I think it wouldn’t have made a difference because we were already well into added-on time beyond the 5 allocated minutes, and even if they had scored the penalty, we would have emerged winners. The Curious Case of Lenny Thy In a post-match interview with some fans, I managed to speak with Mike, who is interestingly Lennart Thy’s neighbour. I asked him about the chance that Lennart missed, and whether he was a little worried about his form. He said that supporters should be more patient, given that Lenny has shown he can do it at a higher level (the Eredivisie), and also because he has barely played a few games for us in a distinctly different environment and climate compared to the Netherlands. His family has also just joined him not long ago, so a little adaptation time shouldn’t be too much to ask for. I agree – and want to add another factor into the mix. I’ve touched on this before but Lenny has come off a full season playing as the main striker for PEC Zwolle, into an LCS team without much rest at all. His season ended in May and he was already playing for us in June. I think we can be more patient – some fans are already calling him a “flop”, and asking for Richi to come back. Yet, I think we can be more patient while acknowledging that it was a bad miss by him on Saturday. From here – you have to score, or force a world-class save from the keeper. Yes, the ball was bouncing, but we expect better from our marquee striker. We hope he’ll be burying these soon! But yet, why is this section entitled the Curious Case of Lenny Thy? It’s because I really want us to form our own views on whether we feel Lenny has been doing alright. In 5 games, he has scored 1 goal, and got 3 assists. Judging him based on that, we’d quite justifiably feel there is much room for improvement. However, I somehow get the feeling that he’s playing in a team that is still not used to him, or in certain cases, not passing to him. Should Haiqal square this to him, it’s 5-2,

Once again, Chin Heng takes over the writing of this article, and he lends his unique statistical analytical mind to the page. Enjoy! This was a match where most fans were fully expecting a stat-padding exercise, especially important since we were ahead of Tampines only on goal difference going into this gameweek, but it turned out to be anything but. I predicted a 9-0 win and had a few lines about dead jaguars and jaguar meat already written for this article before the game. The jaguar jokes will have to wait. Easy Opponents? First, why were so many fans expecting a comfortable win? Well, we were up against statistically the worst team in the league (yes, I am aware they are currently 7th on the table, but hear me out). Coming into the game, Tanjong Pagar had scored just 6 goals (tied lowest in the league with Albirex). Tanjong Pagar also had the worst quality of chances created in the league, with their efforts averaging just 0.10xG per shot (the other 8 teams in the league are averaging between 0.13-0.19xG per shot). This implies that they have been struggling to create quality chances, and in their first few games we indeed saw them taking shots from the halfway line with virtually no chance of scoring. Additionally, they had also conceded 18.4 shots per game on average (vs 10-17.8 per game for other teams), again the worst in the league, indicating that opposing teams generally do not find difficulties in creating chances against them. By carrying out Monte Carlo Simulations using shot and xG data, Tanjong Pagar had an expected points of 3.63 from the first 5 games (actual points – 4), which puts them at the bottom of my simulated league table. An Improved Jaguars Side However, on Sunday night we saw that Tanjong Pagar were not as abysmal as they were in the first few games of the season, and I think credit must be given to them for trying to play football despite coming up against vastly superior opposition. They were not afraid to push players forward in attack, and were willing to play their way out from the back even though the Sailors’ pressing meant that they lost possession near their own box quite a few times during the game. Shodai Nishikawa and Salif Cisse provided the main offensive threats and looked lively throughout the game. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Tanjong Pagar’s performances started picking up at around the same time Shodai Nishikawa rejoined the team. Despite missing the first 2 games of the season, he has been involved in half of all the goals that Tanjong Pagar has scored so far. We Never Really Got Going On the other hand, Sailors never quite got going, not from a lack of effort, but things were somehow just not clicking. There were misplaced passes causing attacking moves to break down, crosses not beating the first man, good runs not being met with the right pass, and we never got any momentum as a result. The overall attacking performance was not a good one – Lennart Thy was making all sorts of runs behind the defence all night but never got the right service, Maxime wasn’t his usual unplayable self and was stopped by a Tanjong Pagar defender one-on-one on a few occasions. Some Positives There were still a few positives to take from the game, as I was happy to see Adam Swandi coming in for the injured Bart to get his first start since gameweek 1. He has put in some good performances from his limited minutes off the bench so far this season, and against the Jaguars he once again put in a good shift and was rewarded with a fantastic goal as well. Our defence also proved to be solid – they did not have that much to do but were reliable when called upon, restricting Tanjong Pagar to half-chances most of the time. The last positive is simply that Maxime on a bad day still gave us 1 goal, 1 assist, and a free kick that hit the crossbar. Not his best game yet it allowed us to grind out a result.   The Stat Pad I thought it would be interesting to try something new – an entire section of the article delving deeper into statistics of both teams, to examine if the underlying numbers support our own observations from watching the game. From the match statistics, there does not seem to be much differentiating the two sides, with both teams having a similar number of shots and similar possession percentages, suggesting a close game that could have gone either way. However, we know that possession is only one aspect of the game. Having the ball is one thing, but what you do with the ball is what matters. Also, not all shots are made equal – a shot from outside the box into a crowded penalty area is not the same as a shot from six-yards out into an open goal. To examine things a little deeper, we have to look at the xG timeline of the match to see how the chances unfolded as the game developed. We can see that this was a tight affair with minimal quality chances, with the best chance of the game being a 0.21xG blocked effort from Lennart Thy during a 23rd minute corner. Salif Cisse had the highest cumulative xG for an individual player, accumulating 0.54 xG over 5 chances in the game. Sailors and Tanjong Pagar amassed just 1.11xG and 0.86xG respectively, but from the chart it is apparent that Sailors were just about the better team for most of the game. The Sailors had an unproductive 2nd half, and a good spell by Tanjong Pagar in the middle of the 2nd half narrowed the xG gap but the Jaguars fortunately had nothing to show for it eventually. With the data on quality of shots that occurred throughout