Written by: Phoon Jia Hui

Warriors FC emerged 1-0 winners over Great Eastern Yeo’s S.League leaders Brunei DPMM at Choa Chu Kang Stadium on Thursday evening to reduce the gap between the two teams to a mere four points at the top.

Warriors coach Alex Weaver expressed delight with his team’s display, describing it as ‘excellent’.

“I thought we were superb today, our midfield was fantastic,” he said after the match.

“We shut them down all over the field right from the start and we controlled large parts of the game. We kept our discipline and our focus. I’ve said before all the time you kind of get what you deserve. It’s all about scoring goals at one end and keeping them out at the other.”

However, the Englishman refused to get carried away with the result and insisted it was still early days in the title race.

“We are only four points away now and there’s a good chance we would play Tampines again in the half round so there’s points to be won there,” he said.

“We just have to focus on ourselves really, we got a tough cup game coming up and we’ve got a tricky tie away to Harimau Muda followed by Hougang United quite close after that.

“So it’s very early and we still have hard games to go ourselves, so it’s not a matter of hoping Brunei slip up, we’ve got to look after ourselves first.”

DPMM coach Steve Kean on the other hand, admitted his team came off second best in the first-half.

“I think Warriors played better than us in the first-half. What we failed to do was to went back when we had possession,” he pointed out.

“For some reason we were a little bit tentative our full-backs to go forward. We thought Warriors would leave the front two up and try to play to the front but they didn’t.

“We were a little slow in pushing forward and as a subsequence of that, we were a bit late in midfield whenever there was a changeover and i think they won a lot of second balls and most of their attacks sprung from that.”

Top-scorer Rodrigo Tosi was a relatively anonymous figure during the match, but Kean attributed it to his tactics which saw him deploy the Brazilian in a withdrawn role instead.

“We felt that the deep-lying midfield player of Warriors deserved enough respect that he started the game well that we couldn’t just leave him on his own,” he shared.

“So i felt that Rodrigo when we had the ball play off him and give us an outlet and then when they had the ball and made sure they don’t start the game so i think he’s done the defensive side okay.”