[POST-MATCH THOUGHTS] – Winning On A Cold Rainy Night In Bishan (LCS 3 DPMM 1)

Pre-game, the club cheekily said in their Instagram post that it was time to do it on a “cold rainy night in Bishan“.

For those who may not be familiar with the reference, this is one of English football’s greatest cliches, where if you wanted cast doubt on a foreign signing, you would claim that while he may be a world-beater, you would question if he would be able to “do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke“. The origin of this phrase was from Andy Gray who in 2011 ridiculously claimed that while Messi was a world-class talent, he would not be able to do well in an away game at Stoke, presumably because the physicality of the Stoke players, and awful weather conditions would combine to nullify Messi.

DPMM Playing Like Stoke?

Enough with the history lesson. If there was any team that was going to be Stoke-like last night, it certainly wasn’t the Sailors. DPMM, making their comeback to the SPL were physical and robust all night, fighting and scrapping hard to try to wrestle some control of the game. In some ways, it was pretty admirable to watch, given that they managed to pump themselves up for the fight when they had not played a high-level competitive league game for three years.

I had the privilege of speaking to Coach Adrian Pennock after the game, and he gave praise to his players for their attitude. He also said he was filled with enthusiasm after the performance especially because he was dealing with some injuries in the squad, and also because key midfielder Josip Balic was out.

However, even though it pains me to say this because Coach Pennock was such a gent in the post-match interview, the fans (myself included) did get mighty pissed off by the time-wasting antics of the Bruneians in the first half before the goal went in. The keeper seemed to take an age with every goal kick. He Pickford-ed at every opportunity (do yourself a favour and check it up on youtube to see what I mean – but basically this means a keeper wasting time by dramatically falling onto the ball and taking a long time to get up even though it is a routine save). In fact, he wasted so much time that at one goal kick, a small boy in the stands behind me shouted “What’s wrong with this goalkeeper? He take one kick take 50 years ah?” Kids say the darndest things, don’t they – but in this case he wasn’t exactly off the mark.

Perhaps if we can have some sympathy for them, this is their first competitive game in a while, and Coach Pennock also referred to the fatigue suffered by his players, especially in the second half, so maybe they were just trying to slow the pace of the game down a little. Still doesn’t make all that diving and time-wasting OK, but oh well we got the win, so, moving on.

Defensive Frailty?

Much like the Tanjong Pagar game, there is a bit of a worry within me watching our Sailors play because while we look to be in control for large parts of the game, when we come under some pressure, it really seems like a sense of panic spreads within the team, and this period of pressure becomes a little sustained. We then have to rely on excellent goalkeeping, or last-ditch tackles to really try and keep our opponents out.

Last night, the goal came from an error by Zharfan Rohaizad, who up till then had been pretty decent. He was called upon to save a few shots, and he did that well. He was also good with distribution too. However, the error was a glaring one as he passed the ball straight to Varankow and this eventually led to a goal. I think this happens sometimes when we play out from the back, and I liked that Coach Risto played down the error when he said –

• “Mistakes are a part of football, it always happens. It’s just that when a goalkeeper makes a mistake, it’s more visible than when other players do. But it doesn’t matter, I want him to just forget what happened and try to do it better in the next game.”

Zharfan had a decent game otherwise, especially considering the wet conditions. He made saves when he had to, clung on to some of the crosses well, and although I am sure he will not be happy with his overall performance, it is definitely something to build on.

Defensively, I thought Lionel Tan had a great game and he seemed to crunch into many challenges, getting on the nerves of the DPMM players, who repeatedly got into verbal tussles with him. He was involved in 15 challenges, and won 11 of them. Impressively, he only gave away one foul despite his front-foot approach towards defending which led to him sometimes being pulled out of his favoured central-defensive position. Also impressive was his 93% passing completion rate with 54 passes played – a high percentage considering one of the often-held criticisms about him is his lack of ball-playing ability.

Anu won 82% of his challenges as well, and was generally untroubled until a spell in the second half, where the whole team seemed to lose composure for a little bit. In our post-match interview with Hami Syahin, he mentioned that there will inevitably be times in a game where the players lack a little focus, or the opponents look to be dominant in attack, but the team would rely on Hariss to calm them down and help them remain composed. I have to admit that from my perspective in the stands, it really did seem that the period before DPMM’s goal already showed us hints that DPMM were going to trouble the scoresheet soon – so I am not so sure that the composure was really visible to us fans.

Why the apparent sudden defensive frailty in the 2nd half? Frankly I cannot tell. I’ve already tasked Zach to look into this, and hopefully he will have some answers for us in the Tactical Analysis piece that should come out in the next few days!

Quick Thinking Makes the First Goal

Before I talk about the impressive response to conceding a sloppy goal, let’s talk about that opening goal. Coach Adrian claims that the throw-in was awarded wrongly and that VAR should have checked it in a bid to disallow the goal. Honestly I can’t tell from the stands, and I also can’t tell from the footage (1:22:37). Regardless, I was very impressed by the quick thinking of Chris van Huizen and Diego Lopes. Chris goes to the ball, scans quickly, and sees Diego sprinting and pointing ahead of him. Chris throws it in quickly, Diego takes it into the box after a little feint towards the ball to draw the defender in. Kodai moves towards the ball, dragging a defender with him, Maxime peels away from his marker who is ball-watching and goes to the penalty spot – GOAL. His marker realises too late and throws in a last-ditch challenge to try and block it but it is futile.

It was a very good goal considering that DPMM had survived some early scares and were building up a good defensive rhythm. It was important to catch them off-guard before they set themselves up. The timing of the goal was also vital – they would have taken a lot of confidence from holding us scoreless for a half, so we really needed to score then.

Impressive Response to Conceding

I think by now we all know that Maxime and Diego are capable of some magic, and it was this pair that combined to feed Kodai to get the all-important 2nd goal. I was impressed that even though it must have been gut-wrenching to concede such a sloppy goal in the second half, we did not feel sorry for ourselves, and we continued to play our brand of football. From back to front, there was more urgency in our play, and we could see Hariss becoming increasingly vocal.

We also took advantage of DPMM’s tired legs as gaps appeared all over the pitch and we exploited them ruthlessly. Part of how we did that was down to Hami’s influence on the game.

This is going to sound like a Hami Syahin fanpage soon, but I assure you that it is not bias that is clouding my judgment – Hami did indeed have another good game (1 or 2 errant passes aside). He was crucial to the team in maintaining the momentum and ensuring that we continued to have a stranglehold on proceedings, not only by dictating the game with his accurate passing (85% from 60 passes), but he also put in a shift defensively, winning 9 out of 11 challenges, and getting 6 interceptions. His dribbling also got us out of some pretty tight spaces, and he finished the match with a 100% dribbling success percentage (out of 6 dribbles). It is indeed mouth-watering to see that Adam Swandi is also back from injury, and the hope is that together they can help us provide the key to unlocking tight defences with their little nifty footwork.

The third goal saw Shawal Anuar do a very Shawal Anuar thing. Zach alluded to this in his previous article profiling Shawal Anuar, and Shawal did it again. If you watch the highlights, you will see that when the ball is cleared out of the box, Shawal doesn’t just look to control the ball dead. He is sprinting, and is trying to take a touch that will bring the ball along with him. It sort of looks very awkward, but I think he is in full control and knows what he is doing. By doing so, he was able to prevent DPMM defenders from getting back into shape and before they knew it, he was already in the box and crossing for Rasaq to get his first goal for us.

Cherry on top of the cake.

Thoughts and Prayers for Nur Adam

Nur Adam looked very badly injured when he came off after 5 minutes. He lay down for treatment on the track for what seemed like half an hour, and it was clear that he had some real trouble with his shoulder. We suspect it is a dislocated shoulder, and we wish him all the best in his recovery. We need our tank back sooner rather than later!

Conclusion

All in all, it was a decent performance from the team. Maxime and Kodai continue their good form, and I guess the real test for us comes on Thursday, when we play against Albirex on their patch. What a big game it will be, so early in the season! We have 6 days to recover, while Albirex have 2 whole weeks given that they do not have a game this weekend. Hopefully they will suffer some ring rust when we face them? We can’t wait for this tie!

Written by Eddy Hirono

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