February 8, 2025 – SailorFanTalk

[Preview] Lion City Sailors v Tanjong Pagar Utd (Fear the Resurgence)

Leave a Comment / Match Previews / Eddy Hirono

A couple of months ago, this would have been a walk in the park. TPUFC was losing game after game, conceding tons of goals while scoring barely any. Now though, they look a different team with some new faces, and also the return of a familiar face in Noh Alam Shah. They’re still bottom of the table, but is there some cause for concern? Let’s do a quick preview while I am still in Manila. Form since NAS Came Back Since Noh Alam Shah’s return, TPUFC have played three matches, achieving a win, a loss, and a draw. That is quite remarkable considering that prior to his return, they were on a run of 6 losses, and their last win was in July 2024. Yikes. However, since his return, by all accounts, he has worked the players insanely hard. I assume that means both fitness-wise and also defensively, because they now seem a much more solid outfit. Of the 3 games, the 3-0 win against DPMM stands out as the most impressive, because for a team that has conceded 74 goals this season, keeping a clean sheet is not easy. Scoring 3 goals isn’t easy as well, of course. He did an interview with the Straits Times and he had this to say – Ouch. Yeah he means business. Their match against Young Lions was an even one, and ended with a deserved draw, but prior to that NAS’s return, most people would have predicted Young Lions to triumph over them. In the 3 matches played, a key factor that has aided NAS is that Salif Cisse is back fit and firing. He has scored twice and also picked up a brilliant assist for Syahadat Masnawi. During their terrible run, Salif Cisse was often not available. He has only made 12 appearances in the league so far, out of a possible 21 games. Now that he’s back, TPUFC’s attack finally has a focal point, and they always look to launch it quick in defence up to him because he is capable of creating his own chances. If we keep him quiet, it would go a long way to getting that victory for us. Terrible Defence The difficulty with this preview of course is wondering whether NAS’s impact is big enough to change what we’ve seen with this team in the first half of the season. As mentioned earlier, they have by far the worst defensive record in the league, conceding 74 goals in 21 games. A -51 goal difference looks bad no matter how you slice it. A lot of that is due to poor organisation. Matt Silva has come in and already shown that he is a better communicator with the backline than the other goalies that TPU used this season. However, I don’t think one man can work wonders. Another unique stat for you is that TPUFC have conceded the most penalties this season, 8. 5 of those were from handballs, and the other 3 from mistimed tackles. What does that stat tell you? Maybe nothing. It could simply be that as a defensive team, they sit a lot in their own box, so given they spend so much time there, they are more likely to concede penalties. It could also be an indicator that they tend to panic a lot, and make bad decisions. However you look at it, I think our Sailors will be disappointed if they don’t cause a lot of trouble for Tanjong Pagar here. Rotation With the huge tie against Muangthong coming up, rotation will definitely enter the mind of Coach Ranko. How will he shuffle the pack? Diogo Costa didn’t play in the Shopee Cup, so he might come in for this one. Lionel did not even travel with the team to Manila – is he injured? Noone knows. Shawal did not even see a minute against Kaya FC, even when we were going for goals. Could Bill have played himself into the reckoning of the coaches, at least to start games in the league, if not in the ACL2? I suspect that the lineup will not be super-weak, given that any slip-up here will mean that our Sailors head into Thailand off the back of 2 bad results. Conclusion I think no matter how resurgent TPUFC are, we have to win this. Ultimately, this is largely still the same set of players that have struggled this season – except we went ahead and took their captain. For the sake of wrapping up the league, for the sake of entering the Muangthong game with a bit of spring in our step, we have to win this. COME ON YOU BOYS IN BLUE My predicted line-up Zharfan Rohaizad Hami Syahin, Lionel Tan, Bailey Wright, Toni Datkovic, Sergio Carmona Hariss Harun, Anumanthan Kumar Lennart Thy, Abdul Rasaq, Bart Ramselaar 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 3 TPUFC 0 Joseph’s prediction: Sailors 3 TPUFC 1 Written by Eddy Hirono If you’d like to support the work we do here at SailorFanTalk, you may want to visit https://ko-fi.com/sailorfantalk and leave us a tip! Picture credit – TPUFC Facebook

[Preview] Lion City Sailors v Tanjong Pagar Utd (Fear the Resurgence) Read More »

[Post-Match Thoughts] Not a Thriller in Manila (Kaya FC 2 Sailors 0)

It was a really difficult watch. Right from the get-go, Kaya FC showed their intentions with a long ball causing us some trouble. In the end we dealt with it, but it was a sign of things to come. In the end, I felt we were deserved losers even if the penalty call looked a little controversial. Let’s dive right into some post-match thoughts. Lack of Motivation? In the post-match interview with Bailey, I asked him straight up if the players lacked motivation because the match was a dead rubber. Kaya FC couldn’t overtake us, and we couldn’t qualify. We’d have to overtake Buriram, and that wasn’t possible even before Buriram took on (and beat) KL City FC. He denied that it was the case, and said the players prepared hard to win this game. I am not sure how much of that is him saying the right things, but I have to say certainly in the first half, it didn’t look that way. Bailey did hint at the pitch not helping the team’s cause to play football, but to this I have two things to say – 1) Kaya FC had to play on it too, and 2) this is not their home stadium, and they are actually used to playing on grass pitches, not this artificial turf. This is slightly worrying because if indeed we failed to adapt to pitch conditions, then this is the second time it’s happened this season. The first time was when we played Borneo FC and we were just so so so poor. We had this to say last time. Unfortunately, it would seem lessons were not learnt, or maybe just maybe, we were right that there was a subconscious lack of motivation heading into this game. Which is a shame, because if you look at the table, if we had won that game, we would have been above both KL City FC and Borneo FC. Which I think would be the natural order of things in this group. Progress must be made incrementally, and I think it’s an important psychological marker to drill home the message that while we’re not quite there yet when it comes to challenging Buriram and Cong An Ha Noi, we are better than Malaysian teams (bar JDT), better than Indonesian teams, and certainly better than Filipino teams. The Fringe Players I mentioned that this would be a chance for some fringe players to step up, and I thought they did alright. If anything, it was the big stars who didn’t quite show up for this game. Bil was brave on the ball, even though he was quite clearly targetted by Kaya FC as the weak link in the backline. He used the ball well and helped the Sailors play out of defence on occasion. Anu was his usual combative self, and I shudder to think what the score might have been without him because he seemed the only player winning his duels. Rasaq was starved of service, but most importantly, support. On a couple of occasions he held the ball up well but there just wasn’t any support forthcoming from his teammates and the chance passed. His link-up play also seemed quite rusty sometimes, and I think that’s a chemistry issue. Perhaps Rasaq should be given a little more gametime in games here and there, if not we’re never gonna see him back to the best version of Rasaq that we know and love. Another fringe player to start was Carmona. Diogo couldn’t play in this competition because he wasn’t registered. As expected, this game was too soon for Mamat as well. I think Carmona was some way off his best against Kaya, and I wonder if he’ll see many more opportunities to play this season, given Diogo’s arrival. But of course, if Anu’s situation has taught us anything, it’s never say never. Conclusion A disappointing night out made only a bit more bearable by the hospitality and warmth of the Filipino people everywhere we go. In the bars, on the streets, shops, wherever, they are always happy to chat, happy to give greet you with a great big smile. The supporters sang loud and proud, hoping to help the team preserve their unbeaten start to 2025, but alas it was not to be. I think it’s dangerous to stop winning momentum by taking a match lightly – and we’ll see if the team can pick up their form when we face in-form Tanjong Pagar United and the big one next week, Muangthong United. Written by Eddy Hirono If you’d like to support the work we do here at SailorFanTalk, you may want to visit https://ko-fi.com/sailorfantalk and leave us a tip! Picture credit – Lion City Sailors