Battered And Baked
Chow Feels At Home
Grilled gave themselves a lifeline as they beat CharlesCheesePie 3-0 at The Cooking Pot, the second consecutive such result after Arrogancae's visit a fortnight ago, which also kept up their run of three goals at home so far this season. CharlesCheesePie had one eye on their upcoming Cup ordeal against soccerid, but did not neglect to field most of their big names, with former U-20 midfielders Wong Chang De, Soon Yew Yeng and Mohd Ali bin Abu Bakar in the supply line to former national forward Ng Wee Kiong.
It was a star-studded makeup that wouldn't come off this day, though, as the Birds for once managed to play around an opponent's counterattacking designs.
Abdul bin Jantan played a key role as he hung back at all the right times, leaving his younger and less cautious colleagues to burst forward, and
Zhu Changchun nearly pulled off a very technical volley in the sixth minute off a cross from
Paolo Iten.
Iten was by some distance Grilled's most productive player in the first half, as the Swiss winger found a niche inside CharlesCheesePie's veteran wingback Yap Loong Dong and attacking winger Lai Yau Meng. With Lai not having the habit of tracking back, Iten found himself with lots of space to work with, and CharlesCheesePie may regret possibly underestimating his passing range.
The visitors had reason to be upset as barely a minute after Grilled captain
Qassem Madaini had been hauled up for a clearly bad tackle which ended inside the penalty area with just a free-kick as compensation, referee Cristian Mejía gave a penalty when Ibrahim Rambli did a similar thing to
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim at the other end. Grilled were not about to complain after last week's happenings, however, and
Paolo Iten notched his first league goal for the Birds from the spot.
An assist was next on the cards for Iten, as after a period of positive play from Grilled, cumulating in a string of corners, one of these finally went in. Dispensing with the short corner, which had drawn a couple of defenders out, Iten dropped an inswinger onto the elevated head of
Seytek Djekshenkulov, who has begun to win the fans over with his knack for thumping headers. Dutch goalie Bernie Vollaers got his fingers to it, but that was not enough.
A Grilled game at The Cooking Pot appears incomplete without a
Chow Ying Lee cameo these days, and the speedster duly obliged with his customary rampage 55 minutes in, leaving his marker in the dust before beating Vollaers with the outside of his boot from close range. This made it three out of three for Chow at the Pot, something he will be hoping to keep up when Batavia visit next.
With the points in the bag and their mission accomplished, Grilled played it tighter with the forwards sticking closer to the midfield, though Chow especially was always a threat to go it alone if the visitors' line pressed too high. They didn't, and the Birds were content to bomb their goalmouth with low-risk, low-return attempts from long range, with
Zhu Changchun and
Abdul bin Jantan both missing high.
CharlesCheesePie were less than pleased at spiralling towards a third straight league defeat after they had begun the season with three wins, but there wasn't much they could do about it without enough of the ball. Their day was summed up when Wong Chang De, who had kept running all the time, took down a raking ball beautifully in the Grilled box late on, but rushed the finish and ended up scooping it over.
