Written By: Kenneth Ho

Hougang United’s three matches so far have been against clubs which finished among the top-six in the league last season, and emerged with two wins and a draw from those fixtures.

One of those wins came against Albirex Niigata, which finished third place in the previous season, on Wednesday evening at Hougang Stadium,

While Hougang coach Amin Nasir was delighted with his team’s second win in a row, he was also keen to downplay the significance of the 3-1 win over Albirex

“We got good points in the first three games, but it is still early in the tournament. We need to put our feet on the ground, we need to work hard and be focused and disciplined in the games to come,” Amin said.

Instead, Amin urged his team to not allow complacency to seep into their game as the Cheetahs were often let down by their failure to maintain consistency over the course of the 2013 season.

“We have a good experience last season whereby our consistency is our problem, we win one game after that we lose. So it is a big challenge for our boys, again I need to advise them to look back, in football consistency is very important,” Amin stressed.

“Not only the top six, the rest of the teams are tough to play. In football anything can happen, so we know our strength so it is important to take one game at a time and try to do our very best.”

The win against Albirex also came at a cost after Hougang captain and goalkeeper Fadhil Salim suffered an injury in that game.

“His finger is dislocated, hopefully later when he goes for X-ray there is no fracture because we have two defenders out, Fadhil is our key player so fingers cross there is no fracture,” Amin revealed.

The loss against Hougang meant Albirex suffered their second league defeat of the season and their coach Tatsuyuki Okuyama cut a annoyed figure during the post-match press conference.

“We lost the game, we don’t have any excuses,” Tatsuyuki said bluntly.

Albirex posed a threat to Hougang in the first half, but Tatsuyuki felt his team could have done better.

“I don’t think we played well in the first half, we couldn’t control the game that’s why in the second half we gave them the three goals.

“I am not worried about the result that we lost two games, but that we did not do what we tried to do in both games, that is what I am worried about.”