The Frenchman hit his fourth match-winning goal this season to seal a 2-1 comeback

Jonathan Behe scored his 15th goal of the season.

SINGAPORE, 15 AUG 2018 – A late goal from Jonathan Behe helped Warriors FC to clinch a 2-1 Great Eastern-Hyundai Singapore Premier League (SPL) win over Tampines Rovers FC in a game that could have gone awfully wrong for them, despite dominating from start to finish on Wednesday night.

Khairul Amri scored a highly contentious penalty to open the scoring in the first half, before an own goal from Fahrudin Mustafic early in the second half gave Warriors a way back into the game.

With five minutes left, Behe then struck to seal a fourth consecutive win for the hosts.

The result meant that Warriors closed the gap on Brunei DPMM FC, who currently occupy the fourth spot, to just one point, although the Bruenian side have two games in hand.

Tampines also remained in second spot despite the defeat, as they possess a superior goal difference over Home United FC.

Both sides hardly had a sniff on goal in the opening 19 minutes before Tampines were gifted a penalty by referee G Letchmann.

As Yasir Hanapi was preparing to take a free-kick, Hafiz Sulaiman shoved Amri to the ground right outside the box. The referee’s decision to point to the spot was met with furious protests from the Warriors players to no avail, before Amri dispatched the penalty for his 14th goal of the season.

Warriors had a golden chance to net an equaliser 10 minutes later, but Behe produced the miss of the season by putting Ho Wai Loon’s free-kick over from just three yards out.

Tampines were bailed out by goalkeeper Syazwan Buhari on 34 minutes, after he rushed out early to prevent Sahil Suhaimi from applying the finishing touch to Behe’s wonderful threaded pass. But the goalkeeper took a knock in the process, and required at least five minutes of treatment before he bravely stood up to continue playing.

However, he was replaced at half-time by debutant Hariz Farid and that would go on to have a bearing on the game.

The home side got their equaliser through a lucky break on 57 minutes. A harmless ball from Poh Yi Feng, who came on just two minutes earlier, took two deflections off Amirul Adli and Mustafic before it trickled into the net.

It was the only contribution of the game for the midfielder after he had to be replaced following a collision with Yasir on 76 minutes.

Sahil then wasted a great chance, fluffing his shot after Khairul Nizam picked him out in the box, but Warriors would eventually surge ahead on 85 minutes.

A high ball by Ismadi Mukhtar found its way to Behe and he smartly controlled it with his chest, got past Mustafic and then fired in his fourth match-winner – the most in the league.

Ryutaro Megumi did find the back of the net late in injury time, but it was correctly ruled out for offside, allowing Warriors to clinch the victory.

WHAT THEY SAID
Warriors Head Coach Mirko Grabovac: “At some moments of the game, it’s (the refereeing decisions) were not balanced between both sides. It was an easy foul (that led to the penalty). But in the second half, we got the goal and played very well. I would like to say congratulations to my players today, they fought very hard.

“Tampines are the biggest team. They have a lot of players who you cannot afford (even) a little bit of space because they can change the game in a moment. Tampines have a lot of good players, but my team played very well today.

“We want to play better and better, that’s the way… The players have started to build up a winning mentality over the last few games.”

Tampines Head Coach Juergen Raab: “It’s very bad, it was a bad match on a bad field with a very bad referee. We had to manage the injury to Syazwan at half-time and the deflected goal, I’m not sure how they scored it. Second goal, (it was) with the arm and it’s not correct and the referee didn’t see. We go home with zero points… it’s one of the matches that’s very hard to analyse because of (an) additional influence from the referee.

“We played on Sunday, now on Wednesday and Warriors had no games on the weekend. We have the power, but what I must say is that we have made too much mistakes in the matches. We have to struggle now because we are equal with Home, but we have matches and it’s still in our hands. Now we have a little break, I hope we can recover, give them (time) off, hopefully they can come back refreshed.”

Warriors: Mukundan Maran (GK), Ismadi Mukhtar, Kento Fukuda (C), Ammirul Emmran (Poh Yi Feng 55′ (Delwinder Singh 76′)), Emmeric Ong, Jonathan Behe, Sahil Suhaimi, Hafiz Sulaiman, Fadhil Noh, Tajeli Salamat (Khairul Nizam 46′), Ho Wai Loon.
Unused subs: Hyrulnizam Juma’at (GK), Shamil Sharif, Suria Prakash, Ignatius Ang.

Tampines: Syazwan Buhari (GK) (Hariz Farid 46′), Fahrudin Mustafic (C), Amirul Adli, Ryutaro Megumi, Jordan Webb, Shameer Aziq, Daniel Bennett, Irwan Shah (Hafiz Sujad 73′), Yasir Hanapi, Khairul Amri, Irfan Najeeb (Zulfadhmi Suzliman 68′).
Unused subs: Madhu Mohana, Shah Shahiran, Faizal Raffi, Taufik Suparno.