Gone To The Dogs
Matsumoto Slices
Grilled's run of five league wins would end at the hands of Singapore Big Dogs, who secured second place with an unrestrained 6-2 thumping at the filled The Doghouse. While the Big Dogs had slumped in both their serious games thus far in January, against Ramseille Volliard FC and Shoryuken FC, they rediscovered their A-game versus the Birds.
To begin with, it was back to a 3-5-2, as Deng Yew Leong rejoined junior forward Hudson Matsumoto in search of a third Golden Boot. Former U-20 Mahesh Murthy thus dropped back to the wings, with Swedish defender Dietrich Venzin tasked to supplement usual centreback Tomas Svensson. For Grilled Birds,
Chan Ze Han led the team out and took up position on the right side of attack, directly opposing his main competitor for the scoring title Deng, at kickoff. The typically-competitive duo didn't have much to converse about, but did exchange a mutual nod of some respect.
It would be the hosts who would find their groove, though, as Grilled for once found themselves out-hustled through the middle;
Cyril Künzler and
Heng Dong Chu were unusually subdued as they were smothered by Alex Zhang and Murthy respectively, who additionally worked their way inside with a frightening consistency. Singapore Big Dogs finding the net first was hardly unexpected after a flurry of warning shots, and the actual deed arrived after 16 minutes as Murthy lost his marker swapping roles with Tay Ting Lee, before volleying the latter's timely return over
Massoud Dob with a nearly-flat lob.
Thus began a horrible three minutes for Grilled Birds, as they gave a fair impression of a herd of lost sheep.
Gilbert Webb was blindsided all too easily by Deng, which left Hudson Matsumoto an easy dribble past the distracted Number Five for a straightforward tap-in. 35 year-old Alistair Xiao wasn't about to miss out on the party, and he pushed inside unopposed to up the Big Dog's lead to three, following some good switching of play.
It was all the Birds could do not to continue being swept away, and
Moey Xin Seng subscribed to attack as the best form of defence, in these trying times. He had Chan as the obvious target as he broke purposefully forward from kick-off, but not unwisely elected to shift it to his left for the oncoming
Kalki Parvathaneni instead. Kalki's strike wasn't half bad either, but Wicaksana Mabenda was expecting it, and managed to meet it with a hefty two-handed punch.
Grilled strove to dig themselves out of their largely self-inflicted hole for the remainder of the half, but Singapore Big Dogs were able to maintain their lines with relatively little difficulty, as directed by pivot player Joey Ling. The Birds couldn't inject sufficient fluency into their aggregate movements in general, which left them with few enough opportunities.
It would get worse before it got better. About 54 minutes in, the Birds failed to figure their opponents' forwards out once more, and there appeared a big gap for Vinod Modi to exploit.
Massoud Dob could hardly do anything as the local fullback glanced a low drive in off his far post, to appreciative cheers from the bulk of the spectators.
The Birds would finally find a true response several minutes on, as
Chan Ze Han made his move. The much-followed striker had been mostly silenced by Venzin before this, but Chan definitely had enough adaptability within himself that this state of affairs couldn't continue forever. Certainly, it didn't seem much of a problem when Künzler poked it forward to him more out of a lack of options than anything, but Chan worked it into a one-on-one by somehow slipping it between Venzin's legs, before pounding it straight past Mabenda with more force than guile.
Hovaness Noubaryan might have through the momentum shifted with that rebuke, all the more with Chan nearly shocking the hosts on his next possession as well, only failing at the last hurdle; as such, the Grilled head coach would go for fresh ideas, by pulling
Moey Xin Seng off for
Islom Davlatov.
This substitution had exactly the opposite of the intended effect, sadly. Davlatov was not allowed any time to settle in, as Singapore Big Dogs immediately rammed another two goals past Dob. First, Matsumoto would profit from a rare missed leap from
Bilal Mohammad Harun to get a free header, and the demoralized Grilled backline would then allow Joey Ling through for a sixth, with
Bhavya Panigrahi putting in but a very soft challenge.
With a comeback totally out of the question, Noubaryan was resigned to telling his players to preserve themselves, though he did let
Vikram Mudaliar on for the last ten minutes for a run-out. There couldn't have been much expected of
Hoàng Trung Quá when he entered for Webb just before injury time, but he did indirectly create another consolation goal, as
Cyril Künzler cut inside to devastating effect.
