City Boys hold off Southern Tigers
JOHOR Darul Ta’zim’s (JDT) stranglehold on the Super League seems to be loosening this season but their rivals are failing to capitalise on it.
The Southern Tigers uncharacteristically failed to collect full points for the second successive week.
JDT were held to a 1-1 draw by Kuala Lumpur City on Friday, and the week before they suffered a 1-0 loss to Terengganu.
The Turtles, tipped to give the league champions a run for their money in the title race, could have been level on points with the Southern Tigers if they had beaten Penang on Saturday at home, the Sultan Mizan Stadium.
But Teregganu dropped the ball instead, suffering a shock 4-1 loss to the islanders.
Despite their wobble, JDT still top the table with 24 points at the halfway stage of the season. Kedah are just a point behind while Penang are third with 22 points and Terengganu fourth (21).
Of the seven consecutive league titles that JDT have won in recent years, the smallest winning margin was three points in 2014 while the biggest was 23 in 2018.
Pahang were jostling for the title with JDT in 2019 but surprisingly dropped points against minnows like Petaling Jaya
City and ended up finishing second, 10 points behind JDT (53).
Last year, Kedah recorded three defeats and one draw from 11 matches but JDT’s unbeaten record saw them clinch the Super League title again in a Covid-19 truncated season.
On the supposition that Terengganu were overconfident against Penang after their JDT triumph, coach Nafuzi Zain said that was not the case.
He conceded that the young Terengganu side were beaten by a better side.
Nafuzi said he would not lose sleep over the loss and that it was a learning curve for his players.
“I don’t think my players were overconfident... it had nothing to do with the win over JDT.
“We have many young players and every match is a learning process for our players especially when it comes to concentration. “Some of the players didn’t play their usual selves... maybe after beating JDT, the expectations were too high on the team. Maybe the pressure of playing in front of our fans was more compared to away matches.
“Penang were good at set-pieces and scored two goals in the first half. In the second half, we pressed with a higher tempo, and we managed to reduce the deficit.
“We were confident of bouncing back but we let in two more goals from our own mistakes.”