Thursday, January 25, 2007

Important Friendly Match

Battler United 4-1 Kanu United

This shall be my favourite fixture of the scheduled friendlies. My goals come mainly from my strikers, only one came from a winger.

The minus point is that I have yet another injury blow to my 21-man squad. One of my main strikers suffered an injury and would be out for three weeks. Therefore, I am left with only 2 fit strikers. Now, I have 3 first-team players injured, 1 an inner-midfielder, 2 strikers and another inner-midfielder out.

The next round of matches would be dreaded, as I would again be facing Bravo Warriors, this time with no profits, since it is an away match.

Once again, I would like to say I am very glad at this win. It is the most significant win, though I would be glad at a draw too. Not that my opponent is very strong. I would say that TEAM KHC and tbph united are the strongest of the lot, though I did flop to a 3-3 draw at hosei liao la.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Friendly Match + League Match 7

Battler United 3-3 Hosei Liao La

My opponent is a Malaysian team, and therefore it feels a bit special. However, I failed to win after deciding on a 4-4-2 formation instead of my preferred 3-5-2 formation. Shockingly, despite playing 4 midfielders compared to my opponents' 5, my midfield rating was actually a slight notch better! It just goes to prove that my inner-midfielders are fast-improving.

This is my first draw in Hattrick So, it is significant.

Battler United 2-8 Bravo Warriors

Now, I am wondering, I must have did pretty well. My last meeting against Bravo, the current league leaders, ended in a drab 0-7 defeat. Considering my improvement in terms of losing margin, it must be a good sign.

The extremely bad sign is that my most important playmaker, had suffered a horrendous injury and would be back only after a long 6 weeks. This spells trouble for me in my survival bid, as this player would only be back for the last league match of the campaign, which would be against Bukit Panjang's replacement. It should be a good 3 points from that match.

Currently, I sit on 6th spot, with 6 points, 3 behind fifth-placed WhiteSandsMechs and 2 points ahead of the relegation zone.

Monday, January 15, 2007

AFF Cup

Indonesia 3-1 Laos
Singapore 0-0 Vietnam
Thailand 4-0 Phillipines
Malaysia 0-0 Myanmar

Indonesia did well enough to carve a win against the improved Laotian team who just lacks stamina. Laos led 1-0 in the first half before crumbling in the second. Meanwhile, co-hosts and defending champions Singapore were held to a draw against the fast-improving Vietnamese side. In fact, Vietnam could have claimed the win had not it been a disallowed goal for Vietnam. Singapore had dominated the proceedings in the first half and Noh Alam Shah should have put Singapore in the lead had he decided to pass the ball to the lurking Khairul Amri. Despite the scoreline, Singapore can still qualify shall they be able to inflict more damage on the Laotian team.

Thailand did well to register a big win against Phillipines, condemning their opponents' hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages. Meanwhile, Myanmar produced another shock by holding the more-fancied Malaysia to a draw. Group A could end spectacularly, if Myanmar defeat Phillipines in their last natch and end with 5 points, Malaysia would be in danger shall they draw and Myanmar win by a big margin. Nevertheless, all 3 teams would be gunning for qualification while Phillipines would want some consolation.

Predictions:
Indonesia 2-1 Vietnam
Singapore 3-0 Laos
Myanmar 3-1 Phillipines
Thailand 2-0 Malaysia
Vietnam 3-1 Laos
Singapore 2-1 Indonesia

League Match 6

Mantissa FC 4-0 Battler united

I made a grave mistake at this match. I decided not to use Counter-attacks as my tactic despite my inferior midfield quality, and paid the price. Mantissa FC put really strong defenders on the field and I was amazed by the brilliant and excellent defence they had. My defence was poor, ably defeated by their weak attack.

I deserved to lose this match. Despite this setback, I'm pretty sure of a qualifier and very possiby survival--guaranteed of 6th place, since Posers are not making much of an impact at the moment despite already having 4 points. I am on 6 points and with all task to do.

I prefer not to talk much about this mtch, except that my star striker had been down with an injury and would be back only in 2 weeks time. Therefore, I have a need to buy an emergency striker. Yet, it should be useful for me for at least a season.

With mid-season nearing, my prospects are good enough to survive yet insufficient to challenge. I have to engage higher qualified players to enhance my challenge in this league which I believe I would stay for at least 3 seasons yet.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

AFF Cup commences

Malaysia did an okay job to despatch any Phillipine hopes with an emphatic 4-0 win. The Phillipines were still hopong to get 6 points out of this group. There might be a chance should there be five teams in each group. They are too optimistic. It is rather difficult for them to get any points in this group having seen this result of the match.

Resolute Myanmar held mighty Thailand to a 1-1 draw as Thailand's hopes of getting maximum points were broken immediately. It could have been worse, had it not been an equaliser in added time against the substitute keeper. Thailand dominated the procceedings, but were unable to capitalise. Myanmar deserved their point and it would be a close fight for the nonours in this group.

Personally, I think that Thailand had the best team in South-East Asia. However, Singapore had shown they can pose great fights. Thailand and Singapore are the only teams to win this tournament. SIngapore also play an attractive brand of football. These two teams are rather similar in terms of their style of play.

I still think they will meet in the finals. Shall that come true, it would be the first time they met in the knockout stages.

I think that Singapore would defeat Vietnam today. Indonesia should win, but by a small margin.

Predictions:
SIngapore 3-1 Vietnam
Indonesia 2-0 Laos

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Friendly

Woxingwosu FC 0-3 Battler United

I continued my fine run in the schedule of friendlies with a second consecutive 3-goal win. As hoped and targetted, I won by this margin. One of my strikers ended his goal drought, though it does not matter. I would not mention much about the match since it bears no much significance. However, I would like to mention that both teams adopted the same tactic---attacking on the wings. My midfield was only just better than my opponent's. My opponent's defence was consistent at inadequate. However, their attack was sufferable, at best wretched (very low).

Coincidentally, this is good practise for me ahead of my league match against Mantissa FC. However, I would certainly find it hard to break the defence of Mantissa, at best at outstanding. Their midfield is superior to mine, but their attack is at best only poor.

I hope I have a chance to add to my points tally in this round's match, a match of high importance shall I meet my target of 5th place in the league.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

League Match 5

Battler united 0-5 Red Chaos

Firstly, I would like to mention that my predictions were mostly rather accurate. I had a 5-goal loss to Chaos, as predicted. Bravo were held to a draw to Norwich, WhiteSands defeated Posers and Mantissa had a walkover.

I would not talk much about the outcomes of this round's matches. I would just mention that my position in IV.4 dropped to fifth, as WhiteSands moved ahead of my team to 9 points. Mantissa moved to sixth as Posers dropped to seventh after their five-goal collapse at WhiteSands. Chaos saw themselves moving up to second, courtesy of the 1-1 draw between Norwich and unbeaten Bavo. Bravo currently are on 13 points, a single point ahead of Norwich.

Predictions:

Bravo 5-0 walkover Panjang
Mantissa FC 2-2 Battler United
Norwich City 9-0 Posers
Red Chaos 4-0 WhiteSandsMechs

My friendly match would be against Woxingwosu FC, with me expecting a solid victory, perhaps by a 2 or 3 goal margin.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Singapore Soccer 2006

Singapore football in 2006 is rather dismaying. According to statistics, Singapore had only a win and 5 draws with 8 losses. Ironically, the single win was against powerhouses Iraq---a shocking 2-0 win. Yet Singapore can only manage 2 penalty-shootout wins against Malaysia. They failed to even beat Palestine.

Despite this terrible record, Singapore had a good year whatsoever in football. They manage to push Iraq and China, 2 strong teams in Asia. Credit is due to keeper Lionel Lewis, who managed a 10-man shortlist for the AFC player of the year award. He was the only Singaporean and the only goalkeeper to make that list.

We would have to give most credit to Referee Shamsul Maidin, who did us Singapore so proud by officiating 3 matches as the main referee at the 2006 World Cup. He did not make the quater-final stage though, due to a lack of experience. Still, popular soccer website Soccernet rated him as the best referee. Hope he would officiate at higher levels!

In the S-league, 2-time defending champions Tampines Rovers suffered from a hectic schedule and eventually finished a credible second. The champions are SAFFC. They had a passable streak under their first manager, but when long-time assistant manager stood up to be the manager, he proved a revelation by leading SAF to an amazing unbeaten streak to lead them to the title by more than 10 points. Young Lions, who were the forerunners, seemed certain to win the league after maintaining unbeaten to lead by many points. However, their inexperienced side had a mid-season collapse and it became clear who would win the title eventually. Young Lions finished 3rd. Home United finished fourth and Woodlands 5th. Foreign sides Albirex Niigata and Sporting Afrique finished 6th and 10th respectively in the 11-team league.

In 2007, the S-league will expand to 12 sides, with Liaoning FC of China and Korean Super Reds joining the league. Sporting Afrique pulled out of the league due to financial constraints. I hope for more competition from the foreign sides. The best position achieved by a foreign side was 5th, twice by Albirex Niigata.

As the AFF Cup draws nearer, Their strikeforce is out of form. However, in a recent friendly against Phillipines, Singapore managed a 4-1 victory, with Indra Sahdan, the main striker, netting a brace after returning from injury just last month. Khairul Amri, a forward/winger, netted another goal while free-kick specialist Daniel Bennett, who netted some important goals from set-pieces at the Tiger Cup last time out, scored another from a free kick. This was certainly welcome news for Singapore, though the strikeforce still have much room for improvement against stronger sides like Vietnam and Indonesia in their group matches.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Casual Post

Since for the moment I had nothing to talk about, I would be talking about random stuff, though related to soccer and Hattrick.

Hattrick:

I am playing friendly matches with a few other teams. There are eight teams in this assigned league. I missed my first match, then started on my second match, which is my 4-1 win over TEAM KHC. I know some of the owners of these teams, I think I know four of seven other teams. This is one of them. My next scheduled friendly match would be against Woxingwosu FC, another one I know.

Some of the targets I had lay out for Season 18:

5th in IV.4
Finish as top 2 in this friendly league

AFF Cup:

In Hattrick, I opened a conference about AFF Cup, and to my pleasance, within a day, there were already 5 additional posts! A great achievement for me in my first time opening and setting up a conference. However, I had high hopes of some response, as there must be people concerned of Singapore football, and no similar conference had been set up.

Targets:

Singapore to reach finals at least.
Singapore to defeat Malaysia in a possible semi-final clash.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

AFF Cup qualifiers

Upon doing some research on the AFF Cup on Google, I finally found out more on this competition. In this post, I would mention briefly about the qualifiers.

The standings of the qualifiers:

Laos 10 pts
Phillipines 9 pts
Cambodia 5 pts
Brunei 4 pts
Timor Leste 0 pt

The top 2 teams qualify for the main competition.

As can be seen, there are 11 South-East Asian countries. All wanted to take part in the competition. As the competition would be made very hectic and gruelling, the organisers decided on a qualifying tournament, so as to prevent players from over-exhausting and attract more interest as the tournament would be a competition of the elite.

However, this act would cause weaker teams like Brunei and Timor Leste never to have a chance to qualify for the tournament. Therefore, no competition means no improvement. These would result in these countries, with small populations, to lose hope as their national team is unable to take part in any tournament.

Meanwhile, Cambodia, who had been participating regularly, had been kicked out before the main tournament begin on 12 Jan. Is there hope for the poor country? Laos and Phillipines progressed to the main draw deservedly.

As the qualifying tournament had ended in November last year, the main draw had already been given. Therefore, they would join the 6 teams who automatically qualified. They are: Holders Singapore, Runner-up Indonesia, semi-finalists Malaysia and Myanmar, traditional kings of South-East Asia Thailand and Vietnam. With these teams, they form 2 groups, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and Phillipines in Group A, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos in Group B.

Both groups would be very competitive, as Myanmar and Malaysia battle for a place alongside favourites Thailand. Holders Singapore and runners-up Indonesia would receive stiff competition from an improved Vietnam.

At the recent king's Cup which Thailand, the hosts, lifted, Vietnam defeated Singapore 3-2 in a match. This suggests that Vietnam would fire from all cylinders to try and regain the glory and repay their fans' support for their national soccer side.

As the competition inches nearer, I would make a pre-tournament prediction that Thailand and Malaysia would progress from Group A and Singapore and Vietnam progress from Group B.

Happy catching the AFF Cup starting from 12 Jan this year!

Friendly Match

Battler United 4-1 TEAM KHC

Another handsome victory in a game which saw only 373 spectators. My opponent is not a weak one, in fact I would have rated it 70% as good as the team who knocked me out of the Singapore Cup with an edgy win, Seventh Mavericks. I did not put some of my main players for the atch and was expecting a close encounter. However, I did expect to carve a result. My midfield is significantly better than his. Mine was at poor (low), one of my higher ratings, while his was at disastrous (high). My four goals again come from 4 different players. I dominated the match with 80% of ball possession due to my largely superior midfield. My opponent had only three midfielders while I had a typical 5. His defence is stronger than my attack while my defence is on par with his attack. Hence, the deciding factor is the midfield.

I'm largely boosted by the win. However, my confidence will not be replaced by optimism of a result against Chaos. I would be glad to avoid a heavy defeat. Not anything like 9-0 or 7-0.

Predictions:
Battler United 1-6 Red Chaos
WhiteSandsMechs 3-1 Posers
Bravo Warriors 2-2 Norwich City
Bukit Panjang XI 0-5 walkover Mantissa FC

I'm expecting this to be an interesting week, with title contenders Norwich lining against in-form Bravo. Shall it end in a draw or a defeat for Bravo, Chaos could be the biggest winners. WhiteSands would ascertain their position in the league shall they defeat Posers and condemn them to demotion.

On my coming posts, I would be including comments and predictions on the matches of the upcoming AFF Cup, previously known as Tiger Cup, for South-East Asian nations.