Post-Match Thoughts

Was it a vintage Sailors performance? No. Do I care? Yes, a little. Is it important that we head into Thursday’s top-of-the-table clash with Tampines Rovers at least level on points? Hell yeah definitely. This late result against Balestier Khalsa came right after a laboured performance against Tanjong Pagar, which also came right after a laboured performance against Geylang International. I think we should be a little worried – let’s talk about some of the observations from the game. Class from Kodai Before we talk about the not-so-good stuff, let’s get the good stuff out of the way. We spoke about Kodai’s return, we wondered whether he might get on the scoresheet, and also whether he might celebrate wildly against us. Well, he did celebrate when the Ismail Sassi decided he was prime Thierry Henry and scored a superb curled equaliser past Zharfan, but it was nothing disrespectful. Where his class really shone through was somewhere in the 55th minute of the game (watch from 55:12), when Hami Syahin cynically pulled Riku Fukashiro back on the counter-attack and deservedly got a yellow card. What followed next was Riku swung an elbow at Hami (and missed), and then gave him a shove too. Quite how Riku didn’t at least see a yellow card for this, I will never know – but the refereeing for this game was quite strange. Importantly though, with tensions rising, we then saw Kodai hug Hami and bring him away from his irate teammate. Irate teammate – unnecessary rhyme in the middle of the article? Check. It was an action that immediately helped to defuse the tension. If that hadn’t happened, I am not sure we’d have seen both Riku and Hami remaining on the field. He recognised he was one of the few players who could have played peacemaker there given his history with the Sailors, and used it to prevent further drama. Class. In a post-match post on Instagram, he also expressed thanks to the Sailors fans for chanting his name at the final whistle when he came over to shake hands with the Sailors staff. Those at the stadium would also have seen him bow towards us in the stands. As supporters, it’s little gestures like these that really provide the feel-good factor from games. Some members of the Crew had always dropped in to check on him during his lengthy injury absence, made gifts for him, etc, so it feels nice when the good feelings are acknowledged. The Penalty Call at the End Riku Fukashiro seemed to be at the centre of everything good that Balestier did, and with the score at 4-2 in the 8th minute of added-on time, it looked like Balestier was gonna get a penalty when Haiqal Pashia’s high tackle seemed to connect with Riku in the box. See it for yourself here. You can also hear the loud calls from the Sailors fans politely urging Riku Fukashiro to refrain from speaking any further. To me, this is a tough one, but I can imagine if it happened at the other end, I would think it’s a penalty. Going by that test – I think the ref got this wrong. Haiqal Pashia went in for the tackle, didn’t touch the ball, and contacted Riku a little. How much exactly? To be honest it’s not easy to tell with the camera angles, but I think given the height of the tackle, I would have given it. It capped a frustrating night for Riku. Besides the incident referred to above where Kodai played peacemaker, Riku also received a ridiculous yellow card for a nothing tackle on Shawal Anuar a few minutes earlier. While Balestier can feel hard done by, and may have had a penalty, I think it wouldn’t have made a difference because we were already well into added-on time beyond the 5 allocated minutes, and even if they had scored the penalty, we would have emerged winners. The Curious Case of Lenny Thy In a post-match interview with some fans, I managed to speak with Mike, who is interestingly Lennart Thy’s neighbour. I asked him about the chance that Lennart missed, and whether he was a little worried about his form. He said that supporters should be more patient, given that Lenny has shown he can do it at a higher level (the Eredivisie), and also because he has barely played a few games for us in a distinctly different environment and climate compared to the Netherlands. His family has also just joined him not long ago, so a little adaptation time shouldn’t be too much to ask for. I agree – and want to add another factor into the mix. I’ve touched on this before but Lenny has come off a full season playing as the main striker for PEC Zwolle, into an LCS team without much rest at all. His season ended in May and he was already playing for us in June. I think we can be more patient – some fans are already calling him a “flop”, and asking for Richi to come back. Yet, I think we can be more patient while acknowledging that it was a bad miss by him on Saturday. From here – you have to score, or force a world-class save from the keeper. Yes, the ball was bouncing, but we expect better from our marquee striker. We hope he’ll be burying these soon! But yet, why is this section entitled the Curious Case of Lenny Thy? It’s because I really want us to form our own views on whether we feel Lenny has been doing alright. In 5 games, he has scored 1 goal, and got 3 assists. Judging him based on that, we’d quite justifiably feel there is much room for improvement. However, I somehow get the feeling that he’s playing in a team that is still not used to him, or in certain cases, not passing to him. Should Haiqal square this to him, it’s 5-2,

Once again, Chin Heng takes over the writing of this article, and he lends his unique statistical analytical mind to the page. Enjoy! This was a match where most fans were fully expecting a stat-padding exercise, especially important since we were ahead of Tampines only on goal difference going into this gameweek, but it turned out to be anything but. I predicted a 9-0 win and had a few lines about dead jaguars and jaguar meat already written for this article before the game. The jaguar jokes will have to wait. Easy Opponents? First, why were so many fans expecting a comfortable win? Well, we were up against statistically the worst team in the league (yes, I am aware they are currently 7th on the table, but hear me out). Coming into the game, Tanjong Pagar had scored just 6 goals (tied lowest in the league with Albirex). Tanjong Pagar also had the worst quality of chances created in the league, with their efforts averaging just 0.10xG per shot (the other 8 teams in the league are averaging between 0.13-0.19xG per shot). This implies that they have been struggling to create quality chances, and in their first few games we indeed saw them taking shots from the halfway line with virtually no chance of scoring. Additionally, they had also conceded 18.4 shots per game on average (vs 10-17.8 per game for other teams), again the worst in the league, indicating that opposing teams generally do not find difficulties in creating chances against them. By carrying out Monte Carlo Simulations using shot and xG data, Tanjong Pagar had an expected points of 3.63 from the first 5 games (actual points – 4), which puts them at the bottom of my simulated league table. An Improved Jaguars Side However, on Sunday night we saw that Tanjong Pagar were not as abysmal as they were in the first few games of the season, and I think credit must be given to them for trying to play football despite coming up against vastly superior opposition. They were not afraid to push players forward in attack, and were willing to play their way out from the back even though the Sailors’ pressing meant that they lost possession near their own box quite a few times during the game. Shodai Nishikawa and Salif Cisse provided the main offensive threats and looked lively throughout the game. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Tanjong Pagar’s performances started picking up at around the same time Shodai Nishikawa rejoined the team. Despite missing the first 2 games of the season, he has been involved in half of all the goals that Tanjong Pagar has scored so far. We Never Really Got Going On the other hand, Sailors never quite got going, not from a lack of effort, but things were somehow just not clicking. There were misplaced passes causing attacking moves to break down, crosses not beating the first man, good runs not being met with the right pass, and we never got any momentum as a result. The overall attacking performance was not a good one – Lennart Thy was making all sorts of runs behind the defence all night but never got the right service, Maxime wasn’t his usual unplayable self and was stopped by a Tanjong Pagar defender one-on-one on a few occasions. Some Positives There were still a few positives to take from the game, as I was happy to see Adam Swandi coming in for the injured Bart to get his first start since gameweek 1. He has put in some good performances from his limited minutes off the bench so far this season, and against the Jaguars he once again put in a good shift and was rewarded with a fantastic goal as well. Our defence also proved to be solid – they did not have that much to do but were reliable when called upon, restricting Tanjong Pagar to half-chances most of the time. The last positive is simply that Maxime on a bad day still gave us 1 goal, 1 assist, and a free kick that hit the crossbar. Not his best game yet it allowed us to grind out a result.   The Stat Pad I thought it would be interesting to try something new – an entire section of the article delving deeper into statistics of both teams, to examine if the underlying numbers support our own observations from watching the game. From the match statistics, there does not seem to be much differentiating the two sides, with both teams having a similar number of shots and similar possession percentages, suggesting a close game that could have gone either way. However, we know that possession is only one aspect of the game. Having the ball is one thing, but what you do with the ball is what matters. Also, not all shots are made equal – a shot from outside the box into a crowded penalty area is not the same as a shot from six-yards out into an open goal. To examine things a little deeper, we have to look at the xG timeline of the match to see how the chances unfolded as the game developed. We can see that this was a tight affair with minimal quality chances, with the best chance of the game being a 0.21xG blocked effort from Lennart Thy during a 23rd minute corner. Salif Cisse had the highest cumulative xG for an individual player, accumulating 0.54 xG over 5 chances in the game. Sailors and Tanjong Pagar amassed just 1.11xG and 0.86xG respectively, but from the chart it is apparent that Sailors were just about the better team for most of the game. The Sailors had an unproductive 2nd half, and a good spell by Tanjong Pagar in the middle of the 2nd half narrowed the xG gap but the Jaguars fortunately had nothing to show for it eventually. With the data on quality of shots that occurred throughout

To add more variety to the SailorFanTalk website, there will be more and more articles written by guest writers. Please give a big online welcome to Calum, who writes his first piece for SailorFanTalk! (You may applaud by your PC or phone if you want) It was a humid Friday evening at a packed Jalan Besar Stadium, setting the stage for a clash between the two highest-scoring sides in the Singapore Premier League (SPL) this season (so far). Expectations were high for an exciting encounter, but the match unfolded in an unexpected manner. Let’s be frank: this was perhaps the most lacklustre display by our Sailors so far, resulting in their first dropped points of the season and ending a record-breaking run of nine straight SPL victories since July 2023. On the other hand, despite playing fantastic football, Geylang secured their fourth draw in just the first round of the 2024/25 season (hence the picture for this Post-Match Review… teehee). The competitiveness of the league certainly deserves credit, even if it leaves us scratching our heads a little. Despite Geylang’s recent form, many fans still expected the Sailors to claim all three points. Out of 47 predictions in the SailorFanTalk Telegram chat, 46 predicted a Sailors victory, with several expecting a substantial margin. Given past performances, who could blame us for anticipating a goalfest, especially considering Geylang’s defensive record? It didn’t take long for the Eagles’ game plan to become apparent from the stands. Now, let’s delve into my post-match thoughts. Eagles’ Tactical Masterclass I have to admit, Geylang outplayed us in the first half. Credit to Noor Ali for doing his homework. Out of possession, our midfield trio of Hariss, Hami, and Ramselaar were completely negated, with Geylang’s high press applying relentless pressure every time they tried to receive the ball. The Geylang front line sat deeper when we played out from the back, making it difficult for Bart to find space and offer a passing option. Noor Ali confirmed this strategy in his post-match interview. The lead-up to the goal we conceded actually looked promising for us. Obren Kljajic’s strength in winning possession from Tomoyuki Doi at the edge of our area almost initiated a promising counter-attack with some intelligent link-up play with Shawal. However, when the pass was played into the middle, Vincent Bezecourt read Hariss Harun like a book, intercepting deep in our half and finding plenty of space to fire a stinging shot into the bottom corner. It’s a “what if” moment – with so many Geylang players committed to the press, had we been able to play out from that position, we would likely be able to find free players elsewhere on the pitch for a numerical overload. If you thought conceding to Geylang early in the game like that looked familiar, I instantly got flashbacks to Sime Zuzul’s low drive that earned the Eagles a 1-0 victory against us a couple seasons back. Geylang were proving to be a very tough opponent in possession as well. On the ball, the composure and movement on display was exceptional and it certainly gave the Sailors a hard time. To be fair, we were able to string some nice passes around the pitch and had the ball in their box on some occasions, but overall in the first half, they were the more patient and organized team I felt. Adjusting the Sails Just as a sailor weathers a storm at sea, it was time for Coach Ranko to make his move against Geylang’s high press. After a series of promising buildups by the Sailors, it seemed we were keeping the pressure on, and the equalizer was getting closer. However, it also felt like one of those days when El Sicario sent a flicked header just wide. Coach Ranko made a double substitution, bringing on Anu and Adam Swandi for Hariss, who had a bad day at the office, and Hami, who picked up an early yellow card. Additionally, moving Ramselaar up to the left injected a different dynamic into the game. As noted in the commentary, these changes had an immediate impact. Kljajic found Ramselaar on the left wing, who cut it back for our Belgian magician, Maxime Lestienne, to take it first time and beat Hairul Syirhan with a tidy finish in the bottom corner. Game on! Game of 2 Halves The Sailors were looking increasingly threatening as the 2nd half went on. The Crew were treated to some wonderful bits of play up close, and Adam Swandi had a couple of decent chances to make something happen for us. The game was definitely opening up now. But of course, it wasn’t smooth sailing (no pun intended), as Ramselaar—who, as I’m writing this, has just celebrated his 28th birthday. Fijne verjaardag, Bart!—unfortunately appeared to pick up what seems to be a hamstring injury and indicated that he had to come off. We managed to have a brief chat with him after the game and are hopeful it’s nothing serious! Thankfully, we’ve got the squad depth of a clown car. Every time you think we’re done, another player pops out ready to perform. Christopher van Huizen came on against his former club to support the backline as Kljajic moved up to the wings. Obren, Obren. How on Earth have we scored ourselves such a versatile tank of a player? The story of the 2nd half was largely the same: good defending by our colossal central defenders, important saves by Zharfan, and the Sailors frontline always looking dangerous in the final third. But it really is the hope that kills. Hairul Syirhan delivered a point-winning save, denying Bailey Wright’s header from a delectable ball into the box by Hafiz Nor in stoppage time. Lennart Thy followed up with an effort on goal which deflected off the defender, and in heartbreaking fashion, the ball was just missed by Lestienne, who could not read its direction. That would have gotten us all three points. Geylang weren’t quite as

A Black Swan Event is defined as an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected from a situation and that has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterised by their extreme rarity, severe impact and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight. Joseph and I had predicted huge wins for the Sailors, and we were not alone. In the SailorFanTalk Telegram chat, 44 out of 44 predictions went for a Sailors win, with more than half predicting a win by 3 or more goals. If you thought that was just because of Sailors bias, this confidence in the Sailors was also found in the prediction league of The Goal Difference Telegram chat. Out of 16 predictions, all 16 went for a Sailors win, with more than half predicting a win by 3 or more goals. Basically, everyone saw this coming. Let’s dive right into my post-match thoughts. Albirex’s Goal was Offside It’s a shocking decision by the VAR. Shuhei Hoshino wasn’t just marginally offside, he was a full body-length offside. Great cross by Arshad, but that is as offside as they come. We are lucky that this didn’t really matter in the end because we still cruised to victory, but try telling Bailey Wright and the rest of his defenders that. When we interviewed him after the game, he was frustrated that the officials got this one so wrong, and he further shared that the replay was already making its rounds in the team Whatsapp groupchat. Regardless of how it ended, I hope FAS releases a public statement about this decision. I mean – they’ve done it before in the past, haven’t they? Just because it didn’t affect the outcome of the game doesn’t mean that the public doesn’t deserve an explanation for what happened. Let’s hope they do the right thing. Speaking of doing the right thing – Albirex’s social media team did exactly the wrong thing. Why on God’s green earth would you proudly put up a replay of a blatantly offside goal? Mystifying and desperate – two adjectives that I could also use to describe their form right now. Quality of the Goals In the aftermath of the game, there were some tongue-in-cheek comments on social media posts pointing out that Hassan Sunny was a specialist in conceding 7 goals. In truth though, without Hassan Sunny, this game could have been a lot worse for Albirex. Watching from the stands, you could tell that the goals were brilliant. Borne out of free-flowing moves, we exploited the space left behind by Albirex repeatedly and finished with aplomb time after time. However it is only upon watching the highlights on Youtube that you realise just how brilliant the goals were. Hassan had no chance, as almost every goal was put into the corner, or even better, the area of the net where it hits the inside of the side netting. Let’s go through the goals. Of the 7 goals, 6 were what I would call “unsaveable”. I don’t think Hassan put a foot wrong, but the quality of the shots was just too high. A few inches closer to him and he might have saved a few. Diversity of Threat At one point in the game, we were leading 6-1, and we had 6 different goalscorers. That felt really good. Unlike other teams in the league where there’s a bit of over-reliance on one or two players, the varied nature of our threats means that opponents cannot just concentrate on marking out one or two players. On a night when our top-scorer Shawal Anuar went off, we still had the firepower to put Albirex to the sword. Despite Lennart Thy perhaps not getting the ball as much as he’d like, he had a massive influence on the game because of the players around him. Let me elaborate. Lennart Thy Looks Frustrated At times in the game, Lennart looked frustrated that his teammates were not passing to him. Notably when Lennart assisted Maxime for goal no. 6 with a fantastic pass, the two players did not celebrate together. Some tension? Maybe. Should we be worried about the tension this early into his career? I don’t think so, this is natural for two reasons. Let’s zoom in on that 2nd point. History has shown us that when there are 2 or 3 top goalscorers in the team, one of them usually plays the unselfish role, creating for his teammates. Rooney and Ronaldo in Manchester United, Bergkamp and Henry in Arsenal, Firmino doing the hard work for Salah and Mane to get the goals. Maxime finished as our top-scorer last season, while I pointed out in my piece on Bart Ramselaar that he is a player who scores more than he assists. Lennart is gonna have to get used to them sometimes turning down the chance to pass to him. However, what he offers to the team is so much more than just goals. In the above screenshots you can see in the lead-up to the 5th goal, Lennart drags his defender with him by making a run to the right side of the box. That leaves Bart completely free. He then continues to make himself available to split the attention of the defenders, before Bart eventually chooses to go for the shot himself. Another example of his runs helping to create space for his teammates can be seen in the 7th goal. Hafiz Nor looks for the options in the box, and sees Bart completely free. This is because Lennart had made a run right in front of goal, and the defenders were preoccupied with defending that threat. His runs are convincing because the defenders fear his finishing threat, but also because he takes up positions where if the pass was made to him, he could still do some damage. These runs are not obvious decoy runs. In case you are still not impressed by his runs, check this out. When Lennart picks up possession here,

To add more variety to the SailorFanTalk website, there will be more and more articles written by guest writers. Ernest takes over the writing of this article. Enjoy! I’m here to write the post-match article while Eddy and Chin Heng rest up from their trip to Brunei. Whew, I’m glad that’s over. It has since been confirmed that DPMM’s next home game will be held at the Hassanal Bolkiah National Stadium, which was empty when our 2 friends (and Anatoliy – that’s 3 of them!) visited when the game was originally scheduled to be played. As alluded to by Eddy in his match preview, we have an advantage to play a game in a “neutral” venue against a potential title contender. Our opponents had to travel to Singapore and play in front of virtually no home fans. The last time they played at their home stadium in 2019, they only lost once at home and won the league. A silver lining if you ask me – perhaps silver for them this season. [Editor’s note – well played, you cheeky bastard] With a localised Albirex this season, the race for the top places could be closer than before and DPMM are a decent side that should not be underestimated. Coming into this game we were the only 2 sides left with a perfect record (albeit having played 2 games, while pretenders BG Tampines sit top after 4 games), so something had to give. Thy-off LCS and neutral fans alike were excited to see Lennart Thy’s debut, and we were treated to it from kickoff. He may have been a bit of an unknown quantity to the local audience, which is why the official SPL broadcast’s lineup graphic was confusing, to say the least. I’m sure Thy has the technical qualities to cut it as a number 10, but he was to be our focal point for this game. With Bailey Wright’s suspension, we started our foreign players in attack in a positive-looking side. Bart played between the lines, with Shawal and Maxime on either side of him. We purred over the trio’s brilliance against Young Lions, with Thy thrown in the mix we now have the most formidable attack in the competition (on paper). Lennart managed to clock 60 mins for this game, and despite not scoring I was impressed with his aerial prowess and two-footedness. Why the misses? Perhaps it was the Jalan Besar turf or the outstanding saves from Naumovski. There were 3 notable chances, when Lestienne put him clean through for a 1 on 1, a point-blank header from an Obren cross, and a left-footed volley from a knockdown. We needn’t be worried though, Thy has proved his ability to get on the end of good deliveries, and with the quality of his teammates the early signs are great. The floodgates will open. It’s worth noting that the man he was signed to replace, Richairo Zivkovic, did not register against DPMM on his debut but scored against Albirex in the next game. Will lightning strike twice? Here’s me making an early prediction of a brace from our number 9. Negative Football DPMM set up to defend from the off, as reflected in the full-time stats above. We had more shots on target than they had attempts. They relied on individual brilliance to move up the field, which to their credit their quality of players was on show – more on that later. While LCS had many golden opportunities in the opening half, DPMM’s major talking points would have been the brilliant saves the goalkeeper made and some unsavoury challenges that threatened to boil over. My first half notes read like this: It was all one way traffic, and despite DPMM’s tactics we fashioned many chances that should have been converted. The goalkeeper put on such a performance that during the interval, fellow fan Brandon quipped that there was probably witchcraft involved (haha). Believe what you will but we certainly had to keep up the momentum to have any chance of leaving with 3 points.  An aspect of the game I did not enjoy was the time-wasting involved. It felt like DPMM were not here to play football and a draw would have been a great result for them. The match officials certainly did not help matters, with lengthy VAR checks on the goals and ridiculous red card claims. We ended up with more bookings than our opponents which did not reflect the nature of the game. DPMM were not without their merits. Eyebrows were raised when they announced the signings of Julio Cruz and Miguel Oliveira, and they proved their quality here once again. Despite constant heckling from the Crew after an early coming together with Hami Syahin, I was personally impressed with Oliveira’s efforts. He came up with what would prove to be DPMM’s best chance in the first half, nutmegging Obren on the right wing before a sumptuous cross across the face of goal that fortunately evaded everyone. Had that been converted we might have been talking about another result today. The Mexican Julio Cruz then almost scored the best goal of the season thus far, with a left-footed knuckleball from all of 30 yards. Zharfan was off his line and the frame of the goal saved his blushes. A few inches lower and we would have conceded. It wouldn’t look out of place in a crossbar challenge compilation. Other than this, he acquitted himself well against the imposing Lionel and El Sicario, sometimes bringing the ball down and laying it off for his teammates, despite the attention of our No.4 and 5. Chances Go Begging Such was the quantity and quality of chances missed that I was begging the football gods for a miracle at half-time. Early in the first half, the quality of our attacking quadruplet was evident. Maxime dinked a delightful ball which eliminated 3 defenders instantly. Our No.10 then had time to control the ball mid-air, turn and face the goalkeeper, another

First things first, this is not Eddy from SailorFanTalk, because Eddy from SailorFanTalk is in Korea on a company trip and will be going to watch Jeonbuk in a local league match. That leaves me, Chin Heng, to take over Post-Match Thoughts duties. Enjoy. Going into the game, we were missing several key players in the matchday squad: Rui working his way back from an injury, Lionel serving his suspension from the red card picked up at the end of last season, and Song away preparing for his wedding (congrats!!!). Off the pitch, we had similar concerns as the Crew was missing several regular members. Although we still had a sizeable away crowd of a few hundred people, it was nowhere near the attendance numbers of a regular league game. All these worries were put to rest by the end of the game, as we won by a comfortable 4-1 scoreline and the Crew were so loud that we were heard clearly through the stream, so much so that the Hools broke out in song – ‘You only sing when you’re winning’ – a testament to how well the Crew did since we were winning for most of the game. [cheeky wink] Budding Partnerships Despite the one-sided scoreline, I am convinced that we were not firing on all cylinders. A little harsh perhaps, considering the team was clearly in control the entire game, but we were also a wasteful at times in the final third, with the finishing not quite clinical enough and stray passes happening on a number of occasions throughout the match. The game was eventually decided by several moments of individual brilliance as well as a mistake or two from the opposition (legend has it that Ensar Bruncevic is still looking for the ball as we speak, after Shawal bamboozled him for that second goal). Nonetheless, I am sure that we can only get better as the season progresses, as our new signings settling in and getting used to the coach, players, and the climate. We are already starting to see the quality of our new players as well as their partnership with their teammates. Bailey and Toni The control we had over the entire game could partly be attributed to the solid centre-back pairing of Bailey and Toni. Other than the admittedly unnecessary tackle leading to the penalty, B&T hardly put a foot wrong for the entire 90 minutes. In fact, we conceded only 3 shots the entire game (one of which was the rebound from that missed penalty). I am certainly looking forward to see how the same pairing holds up against some of the best teams in AFF and AFC as we kick off our Shopee cup and ACL2 campaigns. Bart and Maxime The more things change, the more they stay the same. We lost our last number 10 Diego Lopes (sobs) but Maxime showed the same affinity with our new number 10. In this game we saw the two of them linking up on a number of occasions with this combination directly leading to our 1st and 4th goals. The first goal was a cutback from the right wing by Maxime and a brilliant finish by Bart, an almost casual first-time right foot volley into the bottom corner. The 4th goal was a cross by Maxime leading to a first-time shot from Bart. It was parried by the keeper but Zaiful was helpless against an Obren tap-in for two metres out, which brings me to my next point: Not Your Typical Left-Back As Zach mentioned in his tactical analysis of the community shield ([Tactical Analysis] Second-gear Sailors Sweep the Shield (Sailors 2 Albirex Niigata (S) 0) – SailorFanTalk), we once again saw Obren taking up very advanced positions while Sailors were in possession despite starting as a left-back, with the defence effectively operating as a back 3 (Toni-Bailey-Chris) when we have the ball. This was executed to great effect to set up attacking opportunities on multiple occasions, and in the 87th minute we even saw Obren pushing up to play as striker when Hafiz came on for Shawal, resulting in his first SPL goal a minute later. A versatile setup that we will probably see more of in the coming months, and I am really excited to see how we can make use of Obren’s height and energy to carve out chances against tight defences. Shawal Shows Up as Always Shawal has once again shown that he is a very reliable source of goals when we need them, adding 1 goal and 1 assist to his goal in the Community Shield last week. A brilliant finish with the outside of his left foot into the side netting for the 2nd goal was followed by a stunning through ball to Adam Swandi to finish past Zaiful into the bottom corner for our 3rd. With a rumoured European forward (Local boy Shawal Anuar delivers for the Lion City Sailors in Singapore Premier League | The Straits Times) joining our ranks in the weeks ahead, we are sure to have a wealth of attacking assets available, critical for the 12-month long season ahead where we will be challenging on 2 local and 2 continental fronts. Fit as a Fiddle In the early games of the season, we often see teams finding themselves fatigued by the end of the match, as players are working their way toward full match fitness. This was not the case today, with all our substitutions happening only after the 80th minute. Our players looked fit and were still going at full throttle towards the end of the game – if they were tired they certainly didn’t show it. The result of a good pre-season perhaps? Can We Talk About that First Touch? The win was good and all, but I know what you’re actually here for. The man of the match. The play of the day. The loudest cheer of the night. If you haven’t seen it, go take a look

It’s a pre-season friendly, and you can’t really read too much into these games, but the quality of the opponent I think should fill us with some optimism. It was a very good performance, especially for this stage of pre-season, and taking into account that we played Malaysia’s No. 1 side with 10 men for a third of the game, thanks to (imo) some over-zealous refereeing. I think it also goes without saying that Maxime is a real gem, and we love him very much. There was no doubt when the ball left his boot that he was gonna score. We’ve really been pampered by his quality in the last couple of years. But what about other observations? I sat down with Crew member Ernest to talk about the game, and these are some of our thoughts! Overall Thoughts Ernest – We can compete, even if JDT were missing some key players. Yes, we know several key players were not in the squad but many of our own were playing together for the first time too. We cannot read too much into the what if’s, only the performance and scoreline. It was a respectable one, Sailors had less possession of the ball but always looked dangerous on the break. Eddy – For a team that played a third of the game with a man down, I cannot remember Zharfan having to make too many saves. There was one good one in the first half, but other than that, the team did very well to limit JDT to half-chances. Considering JDT was more advanced in their pre-season than we were, I think it was a very positive outing. Toni Datkovic said in his interview with us that the players only got together to train for the first time a few days ago, so I am taking the positives! Speaking of Toni Datkovic… Toni Datković – Combative Croat Ernest –  Very, very solid. Left-footed option, can be a Pedro Henrique replacement. I can see why his nickname El Sicario stuck. Strong in the tackle and in the air, unfortunate for the goals conceded. Eddy – I thought the defensive unit including Toni did well to limit JDT to so few chances, and Toni was part of that performance. I am sure they will look at the two goals conceded and feel that they should have done way better on the goals considering one goal originated from a hopeful cross, while the other was an uncontested header. With greater chemistry, we should see an improvement on this front. A promising first look at our big Croatian defender. Return of Song Ernest – Suitable for midfield. Solid 60min outing. Song’s return to LCS is a cause of excitement among many fans. He was a staple of good Home United and LCS squads, and every time he touched the ball you could feel the crowd willing him on. Popped up everywhere, could have had a goal but blazed it over the bar. For someone coming back from injury it was a good shift. He also took time to chat with fans after the match too – always a class act. Could he be the best signing of the window? Time will tell. Eddy – It’s always nice to see Singapore’s favourite Korean-Singaporean back in town. He was his usual irrepressible self, snapping into challenges, putting himself about. However, you get the feeling that he’s still shaking off some rust, and regaining his fitness. This is far from the Song we know. His misses in front of goal were also uncharacteristic – on his day he is an ice-cold finisher and would have finished with 2 goals. He’ll be back on form I’m sure. First Look at Bart Ernest – Good player in half-spaces on the turn – and boy did he turn a lot! Many of our midfielders/forwards received the ball with their back facing the goal, but they either laid it off to another teammate on the wings or took minimal touches on the turn to advance up the field. It was a tactic that worked in phases of the game, the quick tempo in the middle third. Bart seems to be well-suited to this, beating his man regularly through combining with others or taking it on himself. He will take time to adjust to his teammates but the early signs are promising. Eddy – I thought Bart had an amazing first game for us. He was brave in possession and was constantly driving at the defence. We’ve seen from his Eredivisie days that he has a good shot on him, but what we saw against JDT was that he’s great at picking up possession and then immediately turning defence into offence with a good pass or a driving run. Hard to dispossess even when pressed hard or double-teamed. He reminds me of Santi Cazorla, and that’s high praise! Zharfan with the Cruyff Turn Ernest – There was one save in the first half where the whole crowd went “OOH”. He sprung instinctively to palm the ball out for a corner when it looked destined for the goal. Generally commanding of his area, and showed his usual good distribution. But we all know everyone is talking about the Cruyff turn in the dying seconds. The audacity. Picture-book moment. Eddy – I thought he was really solid. Held on to a few fizzing low crosses played into the danger area, and did what he needed to do without fuss. Then of course, there was that big save in the first half after the ball had come off Lionel’s shoulder and dropped to one of the JDT strikers. For most goalkeepers, that would be the highlight of the game – but not Zharfan. Late in the game, in a bid to get a late equalizer, Zharfan was given the green light by Coach Rankovic to go into the opposing penalty box for a corner kick. It was half-cleared, and the ball dropped to Zharfan, who

As I took the Grab to the stadium for this game (didn’t drive because I knew there would definitely be drinks after), I have to be honest – my thoughts weren’t about how exciting this Champions League game was. It wasn’t about how our Sailors could potentially win and achieve a 9-point finish which would have seen them go down in history as the best Singaporean team. The dominant thought in my head was simply – “Finally, the season is ending”. And I suspect that might have been the feeling for some of our players and staff as well. I don’t mean that in a harsh way by the way – it’s just human nature I guess. Let’s dive right into some of my post-match thoughts. Nothing to Fight For You’ve seen it before in the English Premier League and any other league involving relegation. For one whole year, there are teams that fly high in the league, playing swashbuckling attacking football and taking on all comers. At the end of the season though – they’ve sewn up 2nd spot or 3rd spot or 4th spot or whatever they needed to sew up, and suddenly they come up against teams fighting against relegation. And they look like a completely different team. That’s what our Sailors looked like on Wednesday. In our Champions League campaign, we’ve seen us being defensively quite solid in our 5-at-the-back formation. It probably came at the expense of some attacking creativity up front, but I would never say we looked ragged at the back. We looked very ragged at the back in this game though. I don’t quite know what it was, but I felt the whole game we looked lethargic and in attack, just couldn’t find that little bit extra to break down our opponents. In defence, I think we were not helped by Anu not being on the pitch, as we failed to close down our opponents as quickly as I think we should have. In the first 10 minutes Kitchee already had 3 shots on target. Zharfan did well to keep the score at 0-0, and we really should have heeded our warnings, but unfortunately, in the 11th minute, Chris van Huizen scored the best header he will ever score. The Crucial First Goal At the wrong end. All I can say is “shit happens” for Chris’s contribution to this calamitous own goal. However, the goal isn’t only his fault. If you watch replays of the goal, Hariss fails to track his man in midfield, allowing Fernando to play a 1-2 with him on the wing. Mamat also fails to see what’s unfolding in front of his eyes, and allows Fernando past him on the wing to whip in a cross. Of course, the cross still needed finishing, and Chris will never score an own goal like that ever again. A bullet header into the top corner which gave Zharfan no chance. Sloppy all-round even before Chris’s meaningful touch. Shit happens. Unfortunately, in this case, when shit happens in a dead rubber game where the opposition is looking to gain their first points in the group and regain some pride, it meant that we lacked the necessary grit to overcome a Kitchee team that could now sit back in numbers and pick and choose their moments to attack us. Time and again, when we lost the ball, they launched a quick counter-attack and looked dangerous. We never really looked like scoring, and even when we came close to the goal, we found the Kitchee second-choice keeper to be an obstacle. It seemed pretty clear to me that we were not gonna score all night. The Killer Second Goal It kinda hurts to continue talking about this game. But OK the article needs to be written, so I shall plug on. I think for this one, Hariss puts some pressure on Fernando, but Bailey should have stepped up and backed his ability to not let Fernando past him. Being a defender myself, I know why he sat back – he probably felt Hariss was putting enough pressure on Fernando, he probably felt that if he sat off a bit, Fernando can’t dribble past him, and he probably felt that his body shape and the area he was covering did not allow Fernando to shoot past him. Unfortunately, Fernando took a shot through his legs, and it was on target. Zharfan must have seen it quite late as well. A very soft goal to concede, just when it looked like we were putting some pressure on Kitchee. Failure to Create History I think it is slightly disappointing that we did not manage to get to 7 or 9 points from this Champions League campaign. The reason I say that is not because I really care for this record. I just think that the way we played this season in the AFC Champions League was way more impressive than last season – so it seems a pity that we were not able to at least have a tangible record to hold on to. Instead, all we have are memories of these good performances. Why do I feel this season’s 6 points is better than last season’s 7 points? Here’s some reasons – So I feel like our failure to at least match the 7 points by gaining a draw against Kitchee at home is kinda disappointing. I am convinced though, that if this match wasn’t a dead rubber match, we would no doubt have got that equaliser or winner. I will take a “glass is half-full” approach to assessing our Champions League campaign – hopefully the team will have learnt some lessons which they can apply in ACL2 next year. The Return of Wookie I am so proud of our fans for giving Wookie the welcome he deserves. The online discourse surrounding Kim Shin-Wook is divided to say the least. It sometimes gets really toxic, with people calling him a flop. Imagine calling the 3rd