Written by: Phoon Jia Hui

Although Warriors FC’s title hopes suffered a dent following their 3-1 lost to Albirex Niigata (S) on Friday evening, coach Alex Weaver felt that they were the better team throughout and that Lady Luck had forsaken them.

“Credit to Albirex for their finishing but we were the better side tonight. We played some excellent football and intelligently. We just lacked that bit of quality in the final third in the second-half,” said Weaver whose team took the lead through Nicholas Velez in the fourth minute.

“I’ve always said talking about luck and things like that. It’s out of your control and like the referee’s decision wasn’t in our control at times so yes, we can consider ourselves unlucky.

“At the same time, people might argue that we have the rest of the game and comeback and play and that’s true. We have to look at that side of the game, but we feel very hard done by that’s for sure.”

One of the game’s talking point was referee Farhad Mohd’s decision to allow Keisuke Ota’s goal to stand even though the whistle had already gone for a foul by Hassan Sunny on the former.

While he felt aggrieved by that, Weaver defended the officials.

He said: “It’s just one of those situations where you don’t know how the game would have turned out if that goal had been disallowed.

“Referees are part of parcel of the game, they make decisions like players and coaching staff do and sometimes like you saw tonight, they get it wrong. It’s very hard to take, we were the better team overall tonight.”

Weaver’s opposite number, Tatsuyuki Okuyama was on the other hand visibly delighted as the White Swans kept themselves within touching distance of Brunei DPMM and Tampines Rovers.

It was also sweet revenge for Albirex who were on the end of a 4-0 defeat in the corresponding fixture earlier this season at their Jurong East home.

“I didn’t think about the loss at Jurong East but I think we are improving. Throughout the 90 minutes today, we played well and that’s why we won tonight,” Okuyama enthused.

“As for today’s game our defence was very good. We did what we did in training session and we could come from behind to win this game. I think our players can improve more but I am happy with today’s result and performance.”

When asked about what he thought of their title chances, the 38-year-old replied: “Of course I hope we can win title at the end of the season but we have to improve more, individually. If everyone is doing their best I can say we can win the title.”