Well, that was expected wasn’t it? As predicted in the preview, Tomoyuki Doi and Noor Ali would give us some trouble and a win was not going to be straightforward. There can be some regret this morning because even though I think we didn’t play well enough to deserve all 3 points, we were in a good position to take the 3 points after two moments of quality from the Bart-Maxime pair that led to two goals.
On the bright side, Tampines also dropped points, unexpectedly to a resurgent Hougang team, so their lead doesn’t widen. We could have gone top of the table though!
Let’s dive right into the post-match thoughts.
Bart and Maxime
Let’s start with the positives. Moments of quality from the pair of them, a goal and an assist each.
Bart was pushed and bodied on the way to scoring his goal but managed to just keep his feet enough to poke the ball in past Rudy Khairullah – just brilliant.
Maxime did Maxime things – a goal and an assist for him a just reward for his efforts yesterday.
Oh, another positive, while I was away in Jordan, I could hear from the stream that the fans were really loud, and importantly, still having a lot of fun. Just amazing.
Both Teams Sloppy
Perhaps due to recent results, both teams seemed to lack any attacking fluency in the first half. Coach Ranko touched on this in the post-match interview, saying that the decision-making wasn’t the best sometimes when they were attacking Geylang and were presented with 4v4 opportunities or 4v3 opportunities.
I’d go a bit further than that, I’d say not only was the decision-making sometimes poor, it was the execution as well, even if the decision was correct. How many times did we see what was seemingly an easy pass roll out for a throw-in, or be hit with so little pace such that the Geylang defender could intercept it easily?
Thankfully for us, this disease seemed to hit Geylang too in the first half. That was a major contributing factor towards both teams’ disjointed performances and I can’t recall any shots of note in the first half.
The second half got better and we created more chances, but unfortunately we failed to finish some of them.
Is Finishing the Issue?
Coach Ranko also touched on the finishing not being as good as we hoped for, indicating that had we been able to finish better, we would have won.
I don’t necessarily agree that finishing is the issue. Did we really test Rudy Khairullah and Hairul Syirhan a lot? I don’t think so.
Two occasions come to mind when we talk about better finishing. First, the Lennart Thy header off a fantastic Maxime cross – that was eventually saved by Hairul Syirhan expertly when he jumped into the air and made himself huge. Second, the Shawal Anuar chance when he had the whole goal to aim at but only succeeded in shooting at the Geylang defender on the line, with the goalkeeper taken out of the equation.
Do we score these on another day? I’d say yes. We’ve been unlucky in a sense that for the past two games, the opposition goalkeeper has pulled off an insane save at a crucial point of the game.
However, you can’t just blame luck. I’d say that the bigger problem is that we are not creating more clear-cut chances. Games like these happen – your opposing goalkeeper will suddenly have the best game of his life, your striker might miss a sitter, you might hit the post, the ball takes a weird bobble in front of goal, etc. A team like Sailors should be able to shake that off, and just go about creating the next chance, and the next, and the next.
Is that too much to ask for? I don’t think so. I think with the calibre of players at our disposal, we should work out a system where we are doing it more consistently rather than just playing on the break, which we did for about 2/3 of the game yesterday.
Is Lionel Tan the Issue?
Lionel Tan is as much at fault for the defeat yesterday as Shawal Anuar and Lennart Thy, and arguably I’d say even Rui Pires.
I know it’s a cliched statement, but you win and lose together as a team. Was it a rash challenge by Lionel, going in too fast and too strong and misjudging the situation?
Yes, it undoubtedly was.
But that’s one bad decision. How can a player be scapegoated for making one bad decision in a game which requires you to make hundreds of decisions over the course of 90min?
I think as fans, we have a tendency to pick out easy targets. I am not immune to this as well. I tend to fixate on goalkeeper errors, or centreback errors more than those errors made further upfield.
When a ball is passed from the centreback into midfield, and it’s underhit, I immediately blame the centreback. The crowd also shouts “HEY JUST CLEAR IT!”
It’s natural, we don’t like danger, we don’t like the uncertainty that comes with it. In the example of build-up play, I’d say that there’s a larger picture in mind – certain risks have to be taken and when we all calm down and think about it, we realise that we can’t be clearing every ball. Sometimes, we need to take those risks to draw our opponents onto us, and create the space that we need to attack.
But back to Lionel and his challenge. It was a poor decision, but in my opinion, no poorer than the many decisions made by his teammates over the course of 90min which led to us only having a 1-goal advantage.
Song, for example, how many times did he give the ball away? I’ll dedicate a section to him. There are some worrying signs, in my opinion.
Rui Pires – what I like about him most is the pace of the pass. He almost always spreads it around nicely, whether it be to his teammates’ feet, or just ahead of them, depending on the context of the situation. However, I felt that in the first half, he was not doing as much as he could to provide an available outlet to his teammates, and that resulted in us going long on some occasions. It might be tactical – Coach Ranko could have instructed the team to avoid the Geylang press by going long, but even if that is so, I would prefer if Rui had been the one spraying those passes. He could have done that by moving into available pockets a little more than he did.
Anyway, point is this – I think we should be a little kinder than to blame just one player for the result. Lionel absolutely tries his best and I think should continue to be backed. If we have a ready-made centreback replacement on the bench, maybe we can advocate for him being dropped for a few games to take him out of the firing line, but Datkovic is injured and Bill has not really convinced.
I go back to this – it is a team failure, not an individual one.
Song Not On Song
This is beginning to be a bigger problem than I thought it would be.
There was an occasion in the first half of yesterday’s game where Song tried to beat his defender, and ended up losing the ball. He didn’t run back. That’s problematic for 2 reasons.
First, I wonder if it’s a mental or physical issue, because I’ve never seen this happen with Song in the past. In his previous spell with the club, be it Home United, or Sailors, he would always track back and make sure he either gets the ball back, or puts some pressure on the opponent. Have his injuries caught up with him, is he playing through pain or something?
Second, it’s a particularly big problem for him because his game is all about energy – that’s his greatest selling point. Some might already have this query in their mind when reading this section of the article – wait a minute, Maxime doesn’t run back too!
But that’s not Maxime’s selling point, one. And two, Maxime more than makes up for it in terms of goals and assists. May sound unfair, but it do be like that sometimes. Your teammates are more likely to be willing to bail you out defensively if you have been top of the goals and assists charts.
I love the guy – I mean I dedicated a whole article to him. And a Youtube video!
Really hope we see the old Song soon!
Conclusion
I hope it hasn’t been too depressing of a read so far – I actually think the performance was much improved. But that’s only because we were absolutely crap against Albirex, and also I am more forgiving of a draw against Geylang because they are actually a good team. We had to beat Albirex all four times this year because they are undergoing a massive transition – really no excuses for that one.
The international break comes at the right time for us. We need to recharge and reset, and figure out a way of playing our football at a higher level. I hope the coaching staff also can work out a plan to deal with the super congested schedule that will hit us after this break. Not only is it congested, we will be travelling a lot too. Just look at this for example.
In the span of a week, we will play three games, and have to travel to Vietnam and Thailand. All three are very strong sides as well. Maybe someone should indent a thunderstorm for the Tampines game so that the LWS is on throughout and we will be forced to postpone that game. @Forrest for your consideration please.
COME ON YOU SAILORS!
Written by Eddy Hirono
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