Match Previews

This picture accurately describes what it felt like for the fans the last time we faced Young Lions. We were in control, winning the game, and then suddenly, we fell off the horse, conceded a controversial penalty, and ended up dropping two very valuable points. No matter how you look at it, those two points were the worst dropped points this season. There is no excuse for a club with the resources that we have, to be dropping points to the Young Lions. I don’t think much analysis is needed here. We’re facing a team bottom of the table, with very little confidence. They have lost 4 in a row, and their last loss was particularly gutting – up 3-1, only to lose 4-3 to Tanjong Pagar United. They have the worst goal difference in the league, and only 5 points from 13 games. On the other hand, we are unbeaten in 7 games, and our goalscoring record is 2nd best in the league – going up against the 2nd worst in the league. Sometimes football is easy, and this seems like one of those games. Though that’s what I said the last time we faced Young Lions, and interestingly, we have not beaten them the last two times we faced them. Here’s a few thoughts I have about tonight’s game. Directness The last time we faced Young Lions, they did excellently to limit the Sailors. The midfield and defence shuffled side to side, side to side, as we probed patiently for an opening. A little too patiently, I felt. It seemed like the team was happy to sit on their 1-0 lead. We need to be a bit more confident in our ability to beat Young Lions, and I don’t just mean on the scoreboard. We need to introduce some unpredictability into the play, mix it up. Sometimes we’ll probe around patiently, but other times we’ll take them on on the dribble. Shawal had a bit of a muted game against Tampines – let’s see him bounce right back this game and terrorise whoever is marking him with his pace and directness. Hami is back from suspension, let’s see him not just stroke the ball around, but also go for a few killer passes, just to keep the defenders guessing. Let’s not make things so comfortable for them in defence this time round. If Bernie is fit and if the club intends to rely on him in any shape or form, then perhaps we could think of getting Bernie some minutes this game. There can be no better opponent to try to bully for a huge forward like him. Just Win To be honest, there is not much more to say. Just win. Conclusion Just win, please. Nothing more important than to get 3 points in games such as these. We’ve slipped off the saddle in the last 2 games against Young Lions, let’s get back up where we belong. Come on you Sailors! Score Prediction Joseph, Ethan, and myself 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: LCS 5 YL 0 Ethan’s prediction: LCS 5 YL 1 Joseph’s prediction: LCS 4 YL 0 And here’s the leaderboard – Written by Eddy Hirono If you don’t want to miss any articles, be sure to follow us on Instagram and join our Telegram chat! 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!

The last time we faced Tampines, it was a shitshow. I felt the 4-3 scoreline flattered the Sailors, and my post-match report was particularly depressing to write, and perhaps more depressing to read. If you don’t wanna relive that nightmare of a performance in full, just take a look at some of the stats from that night. Outpassed, outshot and ultimately outplayed. I think being in the stands felt even worse than the stats suggest. We seemed to be second to many balls, and looked super susceptible to the counter. Of the 3 goals scored, 1 was a fortuitous own goal by Glenn Kweh – which brings me nicely to my first point in this preview. Glenn Kweh In the previous game, it felt a little strange to me that we did not target Glenn Kweh more. This is his first season playing in the left-back position, and while I don’t think he has been a disaster, he has had uncomfortable moments for sure. We have to be ruthless and we have to target him more. Switch it up and really torment him with a mixture of Shawal’s pace and directness, and Maxime’s superior pedigree. If you look at Maxime’s heatmap against Tampines in the last game, we did not target Glenn enough. I can imagine there is nothing more scary than the sight of Maxime running down your wing, so Glenn will have his work cut out for him. The other added benefit of doing this will be that Tampines may have to commit one or two men back to aid Glenn, which will reduce their threat on counter-attacks. Tampines Defence So why so much focus on Glenn Kweh as a possible way to breach the Tampines backline? The answer is simple – they have been rock solid at the back, and it will not be easy to score past them. Tampines have the second-best defence in the league, conceding only 9 goals with 12 games played. In comparison, our Sailors have conceded a whopping 21 goals. A large part of this has been the addition of Milos Zlatkovic this season, whose calm presence in the backline has seemed to stop Tampines’ old habit of passing themselves into trouble. His partnership with Shuya has been a solid one. In transition, Irfan Najeeb also tucks in to play almost like a third centre-back in the backline, and this has worked pretty well for them all season. But it isn’t just their defence. When you watch Tampines, you always feel like they are in control. This is because when they attack, they have Irfan, Shuya, and Milos stroking the ball around at the back, and of course, Kyoga Nakamura as their deep-lying playmaker. He is obviously a very good player, and his calmness fills the defence with confidence because they know if they pass the ball to him, he will retain it well and allow the team to advance. They are a very very patient team – to the point that some of my friends call them a very boring/conservative team, because they do not take many risks with the ball. This has undoubtedly been a reason for their good defensive numbers – if their opponent doesn’t have the ball, they can’t score. Our Sailors attack will have to be on top form to take advantage of the few chances they will have against this Tampines defence. Hami’s Unavailability Hami sits this match out serving a suspension, and it will be interesting to see how Coach Risto shuffles the pack around to deal with his absence. Hami has been quite an integral part of the team, keeping things ticking in midfield with his short but effective passing. My suspicion is that Hariss is brought into midfield, and one of Lionel Tan and Super will be played at the back with Anu. Hariss is defensively a bit more solid than Hami, but perhaps a little less mobile, so it will be interesting to see if we can cope with the hard running and movement of the Tampines midfield. As to how removing Hariss from central defence will affect the team, I think it won’t have a huge impact. All season long I think we’ve seen our Sailors lineup with different central defensive partnerships, and even the most ardent Sailors fan will be hard-pressed to choose the best partnership – we have somehow always looked unconvincing. Of course, I am gonna bring up again the stat that I hate the most – Zharfan has made the most number of saves in the league. This is unsustainable – we cannot keep conceding shots on target. I do not know of any title-contending team in any league where this occurs. Let’s just look at the English Premier League for example. In build-up is where I fear Hami’s absence might be keenly felt – all season long we have benefited from his metronomic quality to pick up the ball and pass it to a teammate. Build-up may feel drastically different, but I think with Hariss and Adam Swandi, hopefully their combined experience and skill will be able to make up for his absence. Abdul Rasaq Abdul Rasaq, I feel will be key in this game. Not just his attacking exploits, which we are all quite used to by now – I believe that defensively he will play a big part. As mentioned above, Kyoga is vital to the Tampines build-up – he picks the ball up in his own half, and often starts orchestrating play, slowly moving Tampines up the pitch. We cannot allow that. We must force Tampines to try to playmake using other players who are less assured on the ball. I hope Rasaq will be detailed to drop in defensive phases to really try to unsettle Kyoga with his superior physique and explosiveness. He is not shy of doing some defensive work, and is a very hard worker off the ball. Just take a look at an excerpt from my post-match thoughts

I am not really into bowling, and I’ve never been really good at it. The one thing good about bowling is that while it’s considered a sport, it takes place in air-conditioned halls, doesn’t involve running, and in between frames I can eat instant noodles. But enough about me, let’s bring it back to the relevance to Balestier v LCS. One thing I absolutely hated when I bowled was the emotions you go through when you achieve a strike, and then in the next two throws, you get something pathetic like 0 and 3. For those not very familiar with bowling rules, when you throw a strike, you not only get 10 added to your score for knocking down 10 pins, you also get a bonus of having the score on your next two throws added as well. So it’s truly a waste if you bowl a strike, and then follow it up with lame throws and get only a few bonus points added. The Albirex game was the strike. A glorious achievement that could and should prove vital for the team’s morale moving forward. If we didn’t actually believe it before, we should now believe that we are title contenders. However, it would mean little if we go on to drop points against teams that we should not be dropping points against. Balestier Khalsa’s Strength I waxed lyrical about Balestier Khalsa the last time I wrote about them. Even though the season was only 3 games old at that point, I had seen enough to suggest that Balestier Khalsa are not a shit team, and would pose teams in the league some problems. In the 9 games since I wrote that, they have picked up 4 wins and 5 losses, and are 4th in the table, the “best of the rest“. This is no mean feat for a team that many regularly underestimate. They come into this game with the league’s 3rd-best attack (better than Tampines Rovers), and in Ryoya Taniguchi and Daniel Goh, have two absolute weapons that people really fear. Ryoya is joint-top scorer in the league with 10 goals, while Daniel is on 5 goals. Assists-wise, Ryoya and Daniel both have recorded 4 assists. I referred to them as a dynamic duo 3 games into the season, and they have not disappointed thus far. Balestier Khalsa also record more shots and more shots on target than our beloved Sailors, and if you were to poll every SPL fan for their top 5 central midfielders in terms of form this season, I think it’s likely that Ho Wai Loon’s name will pop up very often. However, we still must beat them, and here’s why. Worst Defence in the League Balestier have conceded 35 goals in 11 games – more than 3 goals a game. Even considering that they try to play a progressive brand of football and score a truckload of goals, they still concede at an alarming rate. Why is this so? I am no master tactician – but my view is that it comes down to a few key points – lack of a steely defensive midfielder to screen in front of the back four, lack of a commanding goalkeeper, and lack of an able defensive partner for Madhu. I won’t dive too deep into any of my points above – maybe just a few lines each to elaborate. No steely DM – Alen Kozar has helped with ball progression, but for some of Balestier’s goals, there’s just this gaping hole in front of the defence that opponents repeatedly take advantage of. Opponents are allowed far too much time on the ball sometimes – we saw this for the 1st and last Albirex goals against them in the last game. Especially for the first goal, you can see that Madhu had to come out to one Albirex player, and when the pass was made to Kunori, there was still noone else helping out, so Madhu himself had to get out there to close down. Someone with more tigerish bite is needed for the Tigers if they are to stop leaking soft goals. Lack of a commanding goalkeeper – I don’t think I am being harsh when I say that Hairul could have done way better with half of the goals conceded against Albirex. For the 2nd goal, he parries a weak shot right back into the danger zone. For the 3rd goal, he probably predicted that the striker was going to shoot to his left, and made up his mind too early, but even then, the eventual shot was so near to where he was, that he should still have saved it. It was much the same for the 5th goal – probably predicting a hit to the far post, Hairul was completely foxed by a tame shot to the near post by Fuwa. This continues a pattern of him performing below par this season – who can forget him conceding against Maxime in the reverse fixture? The ball was mishit by Maxime and the volley bounced into the ground and up into the air. It should have been an easy save, but he couldn’t regain his footing and meekly watched it sail in. His defenders were so stunned they just stood and watched long after the ball had gone in. Partner for Madhu – Madhu this year has shown shades of going back to his best, especially in the game against Tampines where he shackled Boris Kopitovic and really limited his impact on the game. While Boris did score two penalties, but I think even he would admit that Madhu had the edge over him that game. However, his defensive partner has not been a constant. Amer Hakeem, Fabian Kwok, and Emmeric have all been tried next to him, and I can’t quite tell who is the best partner for him. They’ve all been unconvincing, so this may be part of the reason why Balestier have let in so many goals. However, all