Almost Within
Finishing Rush
Another away defeat kept the Birds in a very precarious position in the league, but they did at least make a closer fight of it this time. The EV proved to be a different beast at home, as their season record of four wins and a draw suggested, but Grilled managed eventually to turn it into a mad struggle, as the clock wound down.
While Jochen Martens kept much of the side that narrowly lost to Controlar last week - Mihovil Turk aside - there was a marked change in their approach to this one. The fullbacks were positioned much more in support of the wingers, who had seemingly been handed more defensive duties.
And, it did work great for The EV, with Grilled's introduction of
Clark Won on the left removing any spark they had there. Further experimentation on the third forward didn't help either, with
Moey Xin Seng the latest to step in, after
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim's precipitous decline saw him not even make the squad. The 19 year-old barely put a foot wrong, while being subtly off the rhythm.
With all of Grilled's troubles in meshing their attack together, The EV were the only ones who posed an actual threat for most of the first half, with skipper Osman Abdul Majid Nazri dictating. Won's unnaturalness at left wing soon told when he got drawn inwards in the 13th minute, allowing Kevin Bomhöffer a free run, from which Tomasz Pawłowski scored with an admittedly monster header on the cross.
The lanky Pole was almost at it again about six minutes later, when The EV's first corner kick got helped on to the back post by former Honduran international Mario Velasco. Although he found only the post this time, The EV wouldn't have long to wait for a second, which came when Bulgarian winger Gencho Mintzev blew the left flank apart before cracking it low under
Valentin Batâr.
Ang Leong Kum, for all his virtues, had never been known as an accomplished tracker, a fact that Mintzev was capitalizing on to the utmost. His constant movement again saw him unfollowed in the 40th, and once Ramprasad Mittal released it from deep, he had only to send
Hoàng Trung Quá sprawling with a neat transfer across his body, before beating Batâr for a second time on the day.
Just as it seemed completely hopeless for Grilled, referee Ingo Lehrhuber threw them a lifeline, calling a controversial penalty after
Tian Yonghang went down under minimal contact from centreback Minalgas Krankalis.
Gennady Dvorak made no mistake, but The EV's captain Osman Abdul Majid Nazri would see them enter the break with a three-goal lead, chipping expertly home on the last touch of the half.
The discrepancy between the two sets of players as they made to enter the tunnel was clear for all to see, and it was hard to imagine anything less than a continuation of the slaughter, for the next forty-five minutes. Happily,
Djan Bacelar was not one to give up easily, and he sought to shore up his backline by returning the recovered
Yuki Irie to the fray, taking over from an under-par Hoàng.
Although such a switch seemed minor, it did lend much-needed stability to Grilled's defence, as Yuki reprised his well-oiled partnership with
Gene Filippone. Grilled would soon face another obstacle, however, as
Tian Yonghang got wiped out by a hard but legal tackle from Krankalis; there was no call this time, and Filippone tellingly got passed the armband, as Tian hobbled off for
Rinor Isufi.
The Albanian's inclusion would see The EV come under true pressure for perhaps the first stretch of the game, as he began to peg their fullbacks back. Encouraged, Bacelar would use his last substitution for the man that the fans had long been calling for -
Low Aik Jia.
Low would be a significant upgrade from the indifferent
Clark Won, and the last fifteen minutes would see the entire state of the match overturned, with The EV strongly on the back foot. Having barely been run at by Won throughout, Bomhöffer and Velasco were entirely unprepared for Low's unapologetically direct style, as the left winger wasn't shy to make full use of his fresh legs.
Grilled's second would be born from his striving, as The EV overcommitted to their right in response. This left
Neeraj Muthyala with the rare time and space he required to weigh his options properly, and after he skipped a rare ill-advised lunge from Ho Jing Ah, the Birds would have numbers in their favour for once. The closer Isufi was promptly picked up by Krankalis, but this left
Gennady Dvorak open for a simple finish.
With four minutes left, Grilled would make it a grandstand finish, thanks to
Yuta Nakakita's lob over Huseklepp, totally out of the blue. The packed defence had been so intent on covering all of the Birds' marauders, that they neglected to respect the defensive midfielder's considerable accuracy from far.
Despite that, it was not to be, all the more with the single minute of injury time that Lehrhuber deemed appropriate; a drawn-out final siege was getting nowhere when Moey took on the deciding strike from outside the area, and while it did bounce scarce few yards wide, a miss was as good as a mile here.
