Author name: Eddy Hirono

I am writing this after watching Albirex drop points to DPMM Brunei, but I will try to ignore that in giving my post-match thoughts for our 4-0 victory over Young Lions. At half-time the score was 0-0, and we suffered a major scare when Zharfan Rohaizad had to pull off an outstanding double save from first Harhys Stewart, and then Syahadat Masnawi, to prevent us going in 1-0 down at the break. Considering that Albirex took barely a few minutes to open up Young Lions in the previous games, there were more than a few nerves at half-time. Our Sailors had to improve in the second half, and they did. In the end, it was very, very comfortable – let’s take a look at the stats. Our dominance was never in doubt in the 2nd half. But what caused the deadlock at half-time? Here are some thoughts about the game. The C-word Prior to the game, we said in our preview that all the stats pointed to a comfortable Sailors victory, and the only thing that could potentially stumble us was complacency. So it was pretty interesting that when we spoke to Nur Adam post-game, he mentioned that perhaps the Sailors were a bit complacent in the first half, and took the Young Lions a bit lightly. We seemed to struggle to break Young Lions down, and when we did, we did not take our chances. Adam Swandi’s diving header went just wide, and he then saw his half-volley smack off the post as well, so we did come really close. Problem was, we also looked vulnerable on the counter and we perhaps lacked the control of the game that we had come to expect after two very successful outings against Hougang and Tanjong Pagar with the new formation. But was it due to complacency? It’s of course impossible to tell if the players subconsciously took Young Lions a little easy, or if they were trying to save some energy in the tank, knowing that just a few days later, they would be playing DPMM Brunei. However, one thing that surprised me when the starting lineup was announced was that there was zero rotation – an unchanged team from our big win against Tanjong Pagar. I thought Coach Ranko may have been tempted to switch things up given that we were facing the basement-dwellers, but perhaps his reason for not doing that was precisely so as not to send the message to his players that Young Lions are an “easy” team to beat. In any case, the best lessons to learn are the ones where you didn’t have to pay a price for, and Zharfan’s double-save ensured that we went in at the break goalless, rather than 1 goal down. It was a warning that did not draw any blood, and one that allowed the coaching staff to make some changes at half-time to give us more of an attacking threat. This was also referenced by captain Hariss in his post-match chat with us. Nur Adam’s Increasing Attacking Threat In a first half where we struggled to create as many chances as we usually do, Nur Adam was quite conservative in his play, as he did not look to overlap as much. In this new system, he is part of a back 3 sometimes in build-up, so more of the risk-taking will be taken by Hafiz Nor on the opposite flank. However, in the second half, he was often seen further forward, and it was this that led to our first goal, as he ran deep into enemy territory (see red arrow) to support Adam Swandi. He took the ball in his stride, and his cutback created chaos as first Shawal put it on target, and then the deflection fell kindly for Maxime to coolly side-foot into the back of the net. This was a run that was not made as often in the first half, so credit both to Nur Adam, but also Coach Ranko for making this tactical change. Although he did not pick up an assist in this game, this chance he created eventually led to the opening of the floodgates. This, coupled with the fact that he has 2 assists from his previous 2 games, means that we are finally seeing Nur Adam play into some real form, and what a crucial time for him to be doing it. In our post-match chat with him, he mentioned that he would like to get a goal soon, but also joked that Maxime always tells him to stay back and let him attack alone. Which brings us to the next point… Magnificent Maxime How many superlatives can you throw at this beautiful Belgian man? It is utterly insane the numbers he’s putting up. He’s the Nikola Jokic of the Singapore Premier League. You stop him from scoring, he’s gonna get an assist. You stop him from passing, he’s gonna get a goal. What can you do as a defender? Last night was his first hattrick for the Sailors – a stat that made me stop and think in disbelief. It just seems so crazy that he hasn’t scored a hattrick yet because we have seen him score goal after goal. The reason for that is he tends to score in twos rather than threes. The club also announced that with his hattrick, he is now the all-time top-scoring Sailor. Just amazing. But it’s not just goals is it? Why I called him the Nikola Jokic of our league is because he isn’t afraid to share the ball as well. How often do you see this in any league? He is on course to reach more than 20 goals and 20 assists in the same season – a very difficult achievement. The club also put out some other stats – Maxime’s 18-goal haul is his best-ever goal tally in a season, beating his previous record of 17 goals with Club Brugge in the 2012/2013 season. Friday’s three-goal haul

1-7 on 1 July. Can’t make this up. We mentioned in the preview that Tanjong Pagar United (TPU) would be there for the taking because of Shakir’s suspension, and how important he was both to TPU’s attack and defence. What came as a bit of a surprise was that Blake Ricciuto was also suspended – which is strange cos the SPL website listed him as only having accumulated 3 yellow cards. For those not super clear about the rules, you need to accumulate 4 yellow cards before being suspended for a game – this is why Shakir was suspended. I guess the SPL website made an error. If anyone knows any other reason why Blake was suspended, drop us a DM! An Intense Start – Pressing TPU High Had I known that Blake was also suspended for this game, I would have been even more bullish in my appraisal of the Sailors’ chances of getting a handsome victory. TPU without Blake and without Shakir – that’s basically half their attacking threat gone. The Sailors definitely smelled blood, and in the first few minutes alone, the pressing was relentless in TPU’s defensive third, which led to chances for us. As early as 9 seconds in, Hami wins the ball here after a soft pass is played into midfield. From here, Maxime is presented with a great chance he should have scored from – we would have been ahead in 14 seconds. At the 1min 31 second mark, look at how intent on pressing TPU we are here, and how high we are. This was a pattern that continued, and ultimately resulted in Anu doing superbly well on the 9min mark to intercept a slow pass and his touch broke for Lestienne to slam home right-footed. It was a superb reward for an absolutely dominant first 10min of the game where we smelled blood, and kept going for it. Anu was very impressive all game, and his intensity was matched by his teammates. The rest of the game was much the same – as we looked to keep up the intensity and press TPU high. Instead of breaking down every single goal, I will try to summarise some of my thoughts. Local Boys Stepping Up Back in the preview to the Albirex game, I wrote about how the team was a little too reliant on Diego Lopes and Maxime Lestienne. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote – In the last 2 games, you have seen how Adam Swandi’s advanced position has allowed us to reap dividends. 2 goals, 1 assist against Hougang, and now 2 assists against Tanjong Pagar. 5 goal contributions in 2 games is not to be sniffed at. Perhaps another stat that has gone unnoticed is that of the 10 goals scored in the last 2 games, 7 were scored by our local boys. Of the 9 assists recorded (winning a penalty doesn’t count as an assist), 7 were from our local boys. No prizes for guessing who supplied the remaining 2 assists. This is vital for our play to progress, and for us to become harder to neutralise. The Sailors are not a two-man team, and there is no excuse for us to be reliant on the magic of two players to bail us out. Lionel Tan and Hami Syahin also got their first goals of the season. Much, much needed. It is funny because we interviewed Lionel last week after the Hougang game and jokingly talked about his goalscoring threat – he said he hoped to contribute his first goal for the team soon. Bang, right on cue, 7 days later, he delivered. We spoke to Hami after the game too and he shared with us about how he was so scared that his one and only goal was going to be chalked off by the VAR. It was funny but ultimately he got the goal. More to come from the both of them, hopefully! Oh, and shout-out to Nur Adam Abdullah for handling his defensive duties well and still being able to get 2 assists in 2 games! Diego Lopes – The Secondary Assister If you look purely at goals and assists, Diego’s influence this season has not been as obvious as Maxime Lestienne’s. Of course, it looks like I am being incredibly harsh here considering that Maxime is top of both goals and assists in the charts. Diego isn’t far behind when it comes to assists, but in terms of goalscoring threat, there is no doubt that Maxime is the man who you usually count on to deliver. But this ignores something else that Diego is very good at. Much like Ozil and Hleb (yes, my Arsenal upbringing is really coming through here), Diego is the king of the “pass-before-the-assist“. As seen above in a chart ranking players on the “secondary assist” (an ice hockey concept crediting the player who made a pass for the assister to pass to the goalscorer), he has done it 7 times this season. The last memorable one was his outside-of-the-boot flick to set Maxime free down the left wing to cross for Abdul Rasaq in the 3-2 victory over Albirex – it was truly sumptuous. His through pass on Saturday night to allow the Maxime-Rasaq combination to happen again was no less delicious, and it was played with such precision that it allowed Maxime to cross the ball without breaking stride, and of course, Abdul Rasaq was there to finish. The secondary assist is sometimes harder to accomplish than the actual assist itself. Especially against packed defences, sometimes unlocking the defence by putting a player in behind the back four/five is more difficult because it requires precision and bravery to make the pass between covering defenders. If you look at the situation below, it is not immediately apparent what Diego should do, but he has the presence of mind to spot Maxime’s run and weight the pass perfectly (too much power and it allows the keeper

All season long, we’ve been asking for a solid defensive performance, and more control in our games, and that is exactly what we got on Sunday night. It was a long day for some of us in the Crew because we had to get up bright and early at 7am to go down to Mattar Road for the Tasek Sailors charity event. We will be writing a fuller article on that sometime soon to talk abit more about the day and of course, the wonderful initiative that is the Tasek Sailors. In any case, we played in the corporate tournament and managed to advance to the Quarter-Finals, but were then knocked out by a solitary goal. Congrats to Deloitte for winning the tournament! So after a full day of baking in the sun, we made the trip down to Bishan Stadium, a little tired and hoping the team would give us all a lift with their performance. They did that, and in very handsome fashion – just look at this. Hougang only managed 1 shot all game, and when you look at the shots chart, it further highlights our dominance. Nazrul Nazari’s shot (in red) from far out was their only attempt all night, and it was comfortable for Zharfan. There was another near-miss when old boy Gabriel Quak did excellently to beat Nur Adam on the right flank and put in a decent cross, which was eventually deflected onto the post by Super, but other than that, Hougang hardly troubled us at all. Adam Swandi’s advanced position Unlike in many games this season where Adam Swandi was played at the base of midfield alongside Hami Syahin, this game saw Adam operate much further forward, in line with Maxime and Diego. There was very fluid interchanging of positions between the three of them, and Hougang struggled to cope. When we spoke to Lionel Tan after the game, he also had very nice things to say about Adam Swandi playing higher up the field. Of course, the results don’t lie. Adam had two goals, and an assist, and if not for the crossbar, would have had a hattrick. Adam doesn’t get many goals – even when he was an integral part of Albirex’s title-winning squad in 2018 (he clinched Young Player of the Year as they went unbeaten all season), he only scored 4 goals in all competitions. In some of our earlier posts, we had also addressed the squad being a little reliant on Maxime and Diego. It is thus heartening to see different players step up. In this game, we scored 3 goals, and only one had involvement from Maxime / Diego, with Maxime picking up the assist for the 3rd goal. I will leave the detailed tactical analysis to Zach – hopefully he can explain in a little more detail why it worked so well. I can see why Adam Swandi was deployed deep, because his confidence on the ball could help us to get out of tight areas and hold the ball and make us a bit more press-resistant, but it was definitely refreshing and nice to see him trying more stuff on the ball as a direct consequence of him being in an advanced position. Long may this continue. Clean Sheet + Magnificent Anu It was just our 4th clean sheet of the season, after 15 games played. It was a well-deserved one, and I think a lot of credit goes not just to the back 4, but also to Anu, who once again had a great match in the middle of the park. He continued his good form from the games he played for the national team during the international break, and was constantly snapping into challenges, and always in the right place to break up any attack from Hougang. Hougang’s talisman Kiki Krajcek had a very rare off-day, and alot of credit for that has to go to Anu. On top of doing his defensive duties, he used the ball well. In particular, there was a moment in the first half where he played such a good dink into the box for Diego to create a chance for Maxime, which Maxime uncharacteristically wasted. If you look at Anu on the ball here, there really isn’t much on for him, and I thought he may have gone for the slightly easier ball over to the right hand side of the pitch where Hafiz Nor was in space – but he proved me wrong and played it over the top for Diego. In a match where our opponents were content to sit back – it was important for Anu to be a little more ambitious. No Coach Risto I did say in the preview that I was a little apprehensive. I think sacking a coach mid-season will do that for your nerves. However, I think this was the perfect performance to help ease some of those nerves. I hope the players and fans are not getting carried away – after all last season’s first game after Coach Kim left saw us beat Young Lions 10-1 in a record-breaking victory. Also, Hougang were really there for the taking, and for large periods of the game, it felt like a training exercise of attack v defence. The fact that Hougang missed both Shahdan and Zulfahmi in midfield probably contributed to that. However, taking away all of Hougang’s flaws on the day, I think there was a lot more structure and intention in the way we built from the back – something that I hope once again that Zach will help to explain in further detail. To my relatively untrained eye (compared to Zach), it looked like the centrebacks were pushed a bit wider in the build-up, the full-backs held the width in attack almost like wingers, while Lestienne, Diego, and Adam Swandi were allowed a nice little platform in the middle of the pitch to combine with each other to devastating effect. It was a very controlled

Two 1-1 draws in a row against Young Lions. That was the record we had going into this game. Completely unacceptable for a club of our stature, no matter how well the Young Lions played, especially if you take into account the constraints they have. I had an interesting discussion with someone in our SFT Telegram chat after the preview was released. A concerned group member asked if I was perhaps being a little too dismissive towards Young Lions’ chances, given that they had scored more goals recently (actually just in one game, they fired blanks before that game for consecutive games), the Sailors were playing back-to-back games and may thus turn to their depth on the bench, Súper was injured, etc etc. I love it when readers give feedback on the Telegram chat – it shows me someone is reading, and it also makes it less of a one-way process? It is good I think to hear back from readers on what they feel. It allows me to ponder the articles I write, and what kind of information they would like to see. “Insider information” has been suggested by many readers and friends, but I always assure them that even if I ever had insider information (which I don’t), it’s always club over self – I’d never put something out to generate clicks if it was not information meant to be public knowledge. But yeah please keep the feedback coming in the telegram chats, Instagram DMs, or whatever floats your boat! Back to the question posed by the reader – was I underestimating the Young Lions? My answer was quite simple – you can see it below – The reason for the confidence was really because despite the two 1-1 draws, there should be no excuses for our Sailors. Short turnaround time? Well the Young Lions played one day before us, additional 24 hours rest does make a difference, of course, but we have bench players who would be key players for their first team. If Rusyaidi Salime, Bill Mahmadou and Haiqal Pashia were available for the Young Lions, they’d play every minute of every game. Arshad Shamim is the starkest illustration – I really like him, but he came on for 2min, and just last season he was a mainstay in the Young Lions team. These players came on for a total of 42 min in the game – Bill didn’t even see the pitch. The strength in depth is just simply incomparable – just look at the two benches and you’ll see that they couldn’t even get 9 subs. I am not shitting on Young Lions, and I always sympathise with them because alot of factors are out of their control, such as whether they can train with certain players due to NS obligations, whether certain players can be released for games, what is the condition of the players when they do turn up for training and games, the fact that they play with 2 foreigners and no senior players while other teams have veterans and foreign players – it will take a whole article or even a novella to cover the problems Young Lions face. Perhaps you can take a look at an excerpt from this excellent Straits Times article about Daniel Goh, when he mentions his stint during NS. How to excel for Young Lions like that? It is no wonder that Daniel Goh’s form now is so much better than it was last time. Second Gear – Finally Some Control Back to the game, the Sailors did not even have to exit second gear to win this game. They were off to the races early and by half-time had a 3-goal lead. While the first goal was unlucky for the Young Lions, the next 2 goals came because the Sailors were hungry and a lot less cautious than they were in the previous 2 games, actively trying to force mistakes from the Young Lions. The second half honestly just seemed like a damage limitation exercise from the Young Lions while the Sailors seemed to ease off considerably once we got the 4th goal. A well-taken volley by Kobayashi in the final minutes meant there was a bit of angst at the lack of a clean sheet, but it was still a commanding win, and for the first time in a while, we were not anxious moving into the final minutes. In fact, it was our first comfortable victory (victory by more than a 1-goal margin) since the beginning of April, when we comfortably beat Hougang 5-0. I had previously bemoaned the lack of control we have in our games, even in our wins, as compared to Tampines, for example, who seem to pass the game to a slow death once they have the lead (unless of course Yasir Hanapi decides to get himself sent off wheeeee) – so to essentially play the whole second half as a training session was good for my nerves honestly. On an unrelated note – can you imagine how fricking exciting it is to be a Balestier Khalsa fan? 77 goals in 14 games. 34 scored, 43 conceded. That’s 5.5 goals a match to watch. Absolute value for money I tell you. The Sailors are close behind by the way – just that of course Sailors conceding goals doesn’t make me excited, it just makes me sad. Sailors have scored 39 and conceded 23 for a total of 62 goals in 14 games. 4.43 goals a game. Sailors, please make it less exciting, please please concede fewer goals. No Clean Sheet I don’t know if it annoyed you – but it certainly annoyed me that we didn’t keep a clean sheet against Young Lions. I referenced the 5-0 win against Hougang at the start of April as our last comfortable victory. That was also the last time we kept a clean sheet. It’s been more than 2 months. I posed the question to Anu post-match to see if