Written by: Muhammad Yazid

Courts Young Lions managed a 2-0 win over Hougang United and coach Aide Iskandar was elated to see his team move out from the bottom of the Great Eastern Yeo’s S.League table as a result.

“Now the boys have lots of confidence after we are out of the bottom,” Aide expressed.

“We all know we do not belong there. We should be even higher than where we are now.

“We need to take one game at a time. Hopefully the boys can put up a good performance in our final two games.”

The former international skipper credited the discipline of his charges as the main key to their victory, and also cited luck as a factor in the result

“I am happy with the result and the performance too, but with the chances we had we could have done better in finishing,” he said.

“We were lucky because they could have equalised before we scored. They dominated possession and we lost out in that.

“It was only after the second goal that our confidence grew and we did better.

“Overall we were much disciplined as a unit and did our best.”

With the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games nearing, Aide insisted that his team will also be having one eye on preparations for the multi-spot event.

“Other teams have started preparing for the SEA Games since January but for us we are only having three international friendlies,” he lamented.

“We now have Faris Ramli, Shafiq Ghani and Shakir Hamzah in our team and the reason behind this is to prepare well for the tournament in hopes of gelling them together with the team.

“Faris is a fantastic player and himself together with Shafiq gives us a lot of options in attack. We know their quality.”

“Of course I feel sorry for Jordan Webb and Sherif El-Masri for dropping them to the bench but we need to start planning for the future.”

Hougang team manager Nicholas Low admitted that it has ‘not been the best of months for Hougang’.

Although they still enjoyed a five-point lead at the top of the second-tier, Low urged his team to get back on their feet.

“It is something that has been happening for a while,” Low said of Hougang’s poor form. “We have tried to address it, but the season is coming to an end and there are a lot of fiery.

“We wanted to do better than last season and to have a cherry on top,” he commented.

“Every game from before today was an important game. We better treat every game like a cup final.”