Giants looking for three points in Eastern Derby

Mohd Sham
info@sleague.com

Registering three points will be the name of the game for Geylang United and Tampines Rovers as the eastern protagonists face off at the Jalan Besar stadium on Friday evening.

Both outfits have endured a mixed start to the season, garnering a single victory in four matches in a campaign blighted so far by a series of niggling draws.

Despite a less than solid initiation into the new season, Eagles head coach Lim Tong Hai, part of a three prong management structure including Seak Poh Leong and Mike Wong, echoed his belief that his side have added a steely edge to their playing façade this season.

Lim said, “We have advocated a style of playing together as a whole unit from day one and this includes everyone; the first team as well as the coaches.”

“Everyone is determined to do their part and they all know their job.”

“We have to think as a team and we win and lose as a team”

The former Singapore stopper lavished praise on his Eastern counterparts, highlighting their vast strength in depth on all frontiers.

“You have half the national team and another half comprising foreigners in their side so there’s nothing much to say really!” Lim quipped, in typically uncharacteristic fashion.

“They have Hassan Sunny in goal, Shariff Abdul Samat and Ridhuan Muhammad in defence while they have the likes of Zulkarnaen Zainal, Mustafic Fahrudin and Akihiro Nakamura in midfield plus Noh Alam Shah up front and the list goes on and on basically!”

“It’s not going to be easy playing against them and it’s going to be a tough fight but what is important for Geylang is that we play as a team and follow our plan accordingly.”

His opposite number, Tampines’ first team manager, Syed Faruk, has urged his charges to build up on their maiden 2-0 league victory against Sengkang Punggol last week by sinking the Eagles in their all Eastern counter.

Faruk explained, “The kick starting (of our season) has already begun against Sengkang and we wanted to do that earlier in the season but we couldn’t predict the challenges that laid ahead of us.”

“We want to start winning games after all the recent draws and we do not want SAFFC and Gombak United, the leading teams in the table, to be running away from the rest of the pack because its looks like that is happening at the moment.”

Faruk pulled no punches in assessing his team’s rather mediocre performances so far this term but paid tribute to coach Vorawan Chitavanich’s tactical nous for their change in fortune against the Dolphins.

“It has been very disappointing for us this season considering we have invested in players with big reputations”, Faruk remarked.

“We changed our playing style and stuck with that for the first three games but the coach made some alterations and it paid dividends against Sengkang.”

“So credit must go to the coach for being bold enough to turn things around when they were not working.”

Faruk identified the tactical nous behind the trio of Lim Tong Hai, Mike Wong and Seak Poh Leong as his side’s biggest obstacle to all three points.

“Geylang have got three coaches; Mike Wong has been with the FAS for a long time and Poh Leong is also a very tactically astute coach and all three of them are good technical people”, he said.

“That being said, Geylang have reasonably good players as well on the pitch and whoever scores first could well go to win the match.”

The Eagles will have to make to without the versatile Walid Lounis who sits out through suspension and Canadian forward Rickey Harris is struggling to recover from an injury while Tampines talisman Noh Alam Shah should shake off an ankle complaint to take his place on the pitch.