TPL
Osotspa 1-0 Chonburi
SAT Stadium, Samut Prakarn
Attendance: 1,728
Saturday 16th July, 2016
Match report
by Peter Reeves
You can’t sugar coat this one. No you can’t. Playing a team struggling to survive at the bottom. A team when up against a reasonable attack leaks goals like there’s no tomorrow. 54 goals conceded in 22 matches, 2.5 for every game. You get the feeling part of the Osotspa coaches team talk includes ‘if you don’t want to know the score look away now.’
So out come Chonburi, with their massive support amazing as always making up what looked like half of the attendance, and put in a performance that defies logic. They were not very good. You had to keep looking at the league table to remind yourself just who was the team in a relegation battle. This not a ‘team’ at all. Teams have formation or shape, a tactical plan, there isn’t aimless pointless passing, they have creativity, players not playing for themselves. Chonburi don’t look like that. I’m afraid the time for pathetic excuses is over. There are no excuses available that are justifiable from the team or the coach let alone the management to satisfy the loyal blue clad hordes who spent their money and gave their time to offer support. The once proud and competitive Chonburi could be slipping inexorably into oblivion unless something is done and quickly. And I don’t mean sacking Therdsak. The more I look at this the problems go a lot deeper than just him.
No doubt a statement from the PR department will point to the fact that they are mid table which was our target…remember. If this ‘professional’ league was made up of a bottom half that could play a bit, Chonburi would be out of sight at the bottom on performances like this. They are lucky there are teams who they can beat that are below them, though I can’t think of one on this performance. And don’t forget the struggle to beat and being outplayed at times, despite having your best team out, by a Regional league team in the week in the cup.
Individuals? Leandro scorer of a great goal in the week playing for himself and couldn’t hit a barn door at three paces tonight. Adul struggling with his control and gave the ball away far too often. Dos Santos not himself and resorting to silly fouls. The sum total of their first half efforts amounted to a harmless effort bouncing off the top of the bar (no one followed up), a few corners, some silly fouls and a Rodrigo shot that flew just over the bar from 20 yards. They’d started ok, flattering to deceive as usual. A few pretty passes that made it look like they were in control but they weren’t doing much. This should have been a comfortable win and for those first few minutes it looked ok, but then gradually Osotspa saw they were going to have chances, and it was downhill from there.
Osotspa had little to offer other than balls up to Dennis the big centre forward though as the match wore on they realised that Sharks were vulnerable down both flanks as well as down the middle. And it was straight through the middle on 17 minutes that number 11 ran straight through the heart of the Chonburi midfield without a challenge. Fortunately his shot was off target. On 20 Osotspa should have gone one up with a one on one with the keeper with no defence in sight, but a poor effort allowed him to save. The balls were going into Dennis and no one thought about stopping this supply line. On 37 an Osotspa corner presented a free header from 3 yards which was missed and on 44 another one on one with the keeper missed. Conceivably it could have been 3-0 as they walked off at half time. Who exactly is the team who are in relegation trouble here? You would hardly have known.
The second half followed a similar pattern, What opportunities that were realised were wasted at both ends. Any real quality sparse. Osotspa hit the post. Rodrigo clean through lobbed it over the bar. Poor control and technique. A few scrambles in both boxes. A continuation of silly fouls in the first half and a body check brought a sending off for Dos Santos. On its own an innocuous incident on its own, but just an accumulation of what had gone before. A journal this week wrote that we should put last week’s match between Bangkok United and Muangthong up as an example of Thai football. No, That was an extreme rarity and is sugar coating the problems that exist here, pretending that mammoth struggle was a reflection generally on Thai football. This should be the example, it’s typical of what we usually get fed by most clubs. Let’s see how many are impressed to come back and watch more.
The winning goal deep into injury time was a surprise because it didn’t seem either team had a goal in them. I thought it had a feeling of offside at the time but looking at replays you can’t see. It was finished quite well though from a very acute angle which does ask what was the keeper doing to allow it to get past him. Neither team deserved the win. The fact that Osotspa were allowed to nick it at the end speaks volumes.
At the final whistle a few ‘discussions’ broke out between players but look at the faces of the players as they leave the field. Didn’t look bothered at all. You can’t sugar coat this one. Something has to change.
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