First of all, I feel our performance against SRJC (Weihan and friends) was our best performance to date. It is not often that we are able to dictate a passing game against the opposition, and we kept possession for more than 10 passes quite a number of times, something which I cannot recall for quite a while. Kudos to us for the improvement, and lets work on our game play more!
Sans the goals, there were a number of things I noticed. Our teamwork and understanding is showing, and our wing-backs' off-the-ball movement are effective (this was esp. clear when I was observing the game on the sidelines, when we needed to distribute the ball in defence). We are also playing the simple pass more frequently, and our defenders and Reubs were very comfortable with receiving the ball and distributing it. One major aspect we can improve on is, as again, on releasing the ball faster, doing the simple pass etc (I am the biggest culprit on this, will improve). I didn't think I would be saying this, but Hogan made use of the ball intelligently in this aspect in the match!
Moving on to the issue of foreign imports. The GK issue was a case of miscommunication which was sorted out post-match, so lets leave it at that. WRT to our new right-back (Hong Loon), I believe it was an issue of introducing more committed players into the team. The main core of players is getting smaller, and some games we struggle to hit 14 players. The past two matches proves the case in point, and KS, JQ and I have talked about expanding our core group of players.
I agree that throwing in better players just for the mere sake of improving the team is not right as per KR's views. However, there is also the numbers issue, and it does make sense to call in good players when we need to hit the numbers. I also agree that new players should not be starting ahead of our more established players. Some reasons as to why Hong Loon started the match was because he verbally committed himself to weekly call-ups, came in for training Sat, and we were eager to see the effects of a 'zai' back 4 post-DH; however, on hindsight Alex/Hogan should have started. There should a 'probation' period where he should be treated as a guest player i.e. play as sub, and if commitment-wise he is steady aka pre-crocked-Jialiang then we consider him a core player.
Do comment on this issue as this has been a grey area for a while and we do have different views.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
