Sengkang Punggol vs Woodlands Wellington: Pre-match

With his job hang on the balance of the outcome of the forthcoming fixtures, it would be wry too ironic if it was his former team that cost our gaffer his job here in the hotbed of Hougang Stadium.

Woodlands Wellington, nicknamed the Rams have always been a perennial underachievers in the local scene but enjoyed tutelage of passionate chairmen and management teams as well as been backed by fervent fans from the northern part of Singapore.
This year roster sees a huge overhaul of personnel as we had mentioned and budgeting in the wage roll look to be top priority.
No one fancy them to do well too soon but the new head coach Croatian Nenad Bacina secretly plot a few surprises.
None as huge as the 3-2 comeback at Choa Chu Kang Stadium against SAFFC a month ago.
Since then they have continued pretty erratic form losing to a late goal at home to Gombak, demolished by a Murakami’s 2nd half virtuoso hat trick against Home United, winning by an odd Jufri Taha own goal within 10 minutes at Balestier and meekly succumbed to a resurgent Geylang by conceding two soft goals.
So we are speculating which Woodlands team would turn up on Thursday.

While home records hadn’t been great (like ourselves they have only 2 home draws to account for so far), their away form hadn’t been that bad despite leaking goals at both Jurong East and Clementi.
In retrospect, our team hadn’t really got used to the notion of “home advantage” as Joey had failed to keep a clean sheet on home turf so far, amassing 14 goals conceded in 4 games, half of which from the rampant Warriors.
This tie might envisaged a chance for our young custodian to redeem himself but he will need his experienced defensive backline to do him a major favor to not choke when it matters most.
Then again Joey might not even start due to the drastic drop of confidence after the mauling which even affected him in the previous Prime League fixture against the young Eagles.

While we hadn’t be able to keep a clean sheet at home, we would find some solace that our frontline had been putting in goals at the other end.
7 of the 8 scored thus far this season came at home and surely one will fancy us knocking in a couple on Thursday; that is if Indra Sahdan who is carrying a bad shoulder injury will to be starting.
Even if he starts, would he be the lone striker up front, facing a daunting task to win aerial battles against the “Ebony & Ivory” Towers of the Woodlands defensive backline?
It was a joke to be ridiculed when that was exactly the tactic used against the sound defense of SAF, and if the same is replicated against Woodlands, we can kiss scoring on Thursday goodbye.

With Abdoulaye suspended for picking up his 4th yellow card at Clementi last week, we might fancy Anthony to start, bringing his exuberance on the right as he did time and again in those transient 2nd half cameos so far.
Another one which I like to see maintaining his decent form would be left winger Sazali Salleh who surprisingly was dropped against the Protectors.
He surely would find extra motivation against his former employers, so with defensive stalwarts Zahid Ahmad and Jerry Batholomeusz who both need to pick themselves up from rather lackluster performances of late.

Ageless keeper Rezal Hassan did not last through that Geylang game last week and was deputised by Ahmadulhaq Che Omar who look short of match practise.
If he is to start, then we can hope for better outcome.
But ultimately our boys need to start getting back that winning mentality after being in the rut of despondent draws & bad losses for so long.
Woodlands were unbeaten in 3 ties against us in 2008, and would love to retain that form but personally I deem Woodlands at home is a must win, if with the players we had and not be able to deliver, then drastic change had to be carried out.