Merlions Sunk
Chad Is Back
West Merlions were relegated from Division Two after the Birds took a 4-0 away win from their Sentosa home, but this had been coming after they had managed just the one win - 1-0 over Batok Earthquakes - in their previous eleven league outings. Then again, they had shown themselves to be competitive in restricting the goal margin to three or less, including a battling 1-2 at The Cooking Pot... until today.
Uruguay head coach Homero Balseiro was not helped by national wing prospect Gavin Stockwell sustaining a wrenched left knee in their loss on penalties to French IV.5 hosts lambig boys le retour in a midweek friendly, a hot-blooded affair that also had Nicolae-Cristian Cută sent off late. The Romanian forward would not feature here as Balseiro opted for a 5-5-0 likely to try and pull something out of the bag, but if that was his intent, it would not come off.
Ajay Lieuw Fat would be the Merlions' great hope as he settled into a central role, with 20 year-old Ee Wei Chu pushing up beside him, and big centreback Radu-Andrei Vărzaru captaining the team in front of Constantin Mihai. For Grilled Birds,
Chad Thach returned to the starting lineup competitively for the first time since his early sending-off versus Marine Parade Kings more than a month ago, with Myanmar midfielder
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko likewise reclaiming his spot. 36 year-old Saint Vincent legend
Jerome Crawford remained on the bench, however, with rumours of his impending exit already swirling about Jurong.
As might have been expected from their formation, the Merlions exerted themselves towards pressing Grilled within their own half, which however may have had less of an impact than they had hoped for. The Birds remained able to thread their way into the opposing box with a fair amount of regularity, aw
Wu Ping De did to feed
Hisham Zubari's slightly-wide effort in the seventeenth minute. This led to the hosts' biggest chance of the day as the much-heralded Galactic Eagles CF trainee Heng Tze Kim blasted up the left, living up to his near million-dollar transfer, but
Genki Nagano managed to stop the teenager in time.
This was not the end of the back-and-forth on that flank, as Genki retained enough control over the ball to scoop it on to Hein, who swung it down the line for the returning
Wu Ping De - who was happy enough to change direction once again. Juuso Varila was caught out having followed Heng in his raid, and a quick exchange with
Lim An Keng allowed Wu to break inside and tuck it past Mihai for 1-0.
West Merlions were harder to play through for the remainder of the half, though they would not have too much luck in unleashing Ee from how deep their midfield generally was.
Genki Nagano appeared aware of how dangerous a single-goal lead was, as he personally exhorted each of his teammates in the lead-up to the restart, and they would indeed go up a gear in attacking their opponents from there.
Merlions remained clogging their last third with some success, and they would even prevent
Ananda Hettiarachchi from having a go at over twenty yards in the 62nd minute, with Ajay Lieuw Fat closing Zubari down on the attempted pass. This was perhaps not to their advantage as the Grilled Number Three repackaged it into a longer ball out to
Phillip Nagata after recovering, which had
Hwang Teck Fu rock the net following a further neat touch from
Chad Thach.
This was a welcome sign of the out-of-favour forward getting his groove back, and it was evident as to how much more of his old assurance was coming back, as he worked on the ball.
Jerome Crawford then entered for
Johann Schwietzer with twenty minutes remaining, largely to indifference from the visiting fans, who however perked up when Nagata cleverly played Thach through for 3-0 several minutes on.
Despite their trying to keep the game tight on principle, Grilled Birds found most of their breakthroughs from switching the action out wide, understandably given how the Merlions were incentivized to stay inside.
Wu Ping De had all the space he needed to build up speed coming in from the left in the 79th minute, and neither Varila nor Vărzaru wanted a piece of that. Thus unhindered, Wu would dodge past both and cut towards the head of the penalty area, before powering a low drive to the bottom right corner.
Juuso Varila would be booked slightly later anyway for catching
Lim An Keng's shins in his follow-up on an otherwise marginal tackle, and West Merlions then went all-out on defence, to see the game out. There were two late subs from each team with
Mohd Marzuki Khairul and
Paulino Trindade coming on for the Birds, and the match ended with Merlions fans contemplating their pending comeback from Division Three.
