Penguins Poke Through
Esteves Double
Grilled's reserves were routed by fellow Round Five losers Pudgy Penguins, who made a stir at The Cooking Pot with their neat white-and-blue away kit boasting a large capital P on their chests.
Liehner threw a side containing just three first-teamers into the fray, with Talib surprisingly not featuring. Bona stood in for him in central defence, while Spirig and Jie Siong were handed midfield roles. They couldn't paper over glaring weaknesses in the other parts of the side, however, and Penguins' Fernando Esteves soon put them in the lead with a looping free-kick over
Cheung Huel-sheng.
Grilled were not actually completely outplayed, but the Penguins both had the best of the opportunities and the concentration to finish them off. Highly-regarded Spanish teenager Juan Martínez Herrero blew through all resistance with a direct run and topped it off with a whopper of a shot to make it two-nil.
The other half of Penguins' impetuous young strikeforce soon made it three, as Colombian Nazareno Ome evaded a challenge by Bona with good agility, and maintained his shooting stance to fire the ball into the bottom corner. Esteves then chipped one narrowly wide with the goal at his mercy, before local defender Li Beng Aik drew the ire of the crowd for a dangerous high tackle on Mirchev, for which he was carded.
The typical December rainfall didn't help to rouse the dwindling crowd, which wasn't impressed when Esteves scored a fourth in the visitors' first attack of the second half.
Grilled would not be shut out, though, as
Ulf Hjortlind managed a difficult side-shot while running at full throttle past the last defender. Penguins' Li Kunqian stuck out a foot just too late to stop the ball rolling the length of the goal to end up just inside the far post.
Mohd Firdaus bin Yaacob entertained with an outrageous attempt at goal from almost the corner flag, and might even have succeeded had wingback Marcelo Drago not rushed back in time to cover. There were a couple of high-flying efforts by Mirchev and Ome, but nothing more went in.
