Ramblers Wings Clipped By De'Butterfly

The 3rd American President, Thomas Jefferson, once said, “.. the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” But if he were to look at Rambler's performances in the Chinese Super League week in and week out, I am sure he would beg to differ. Another dominating performance undermined by another heart-breaking result.

Ramblers went down 1-0 to De'Butterfly in the dying minutes of a match the all-blacks controlled from the start. Having won all their previous encounters and never conceding a goal against their rival, Ramblers looked in menacing form as Chard rattled Tony's crossbar from a freekick early in the game and the keeper had to be alert again to acrobatically palm away a thunderous drive from Man. The big man pulled off another desperate save with his feet when a cross on the left found an unmarked Wei at the far post who didn't put enough power into his shot.

With the absence of first-team strikers Heng and Brown, Chien was working as hard as he could upfront with some very smart runs, causing the De'Butterfly defence to stay on their toes while Shukor and Wei were bombing down their flanks, supplying cross after cross. Poay, Man and Jason made up the midfield trio and De'Butterfly responded to Rambler's dominance by defending stoutly, playing on the counter-attack and booting the ball forward to their nippy striker to run onto, reminiscent of England. To be fair, their tactic did yield a shot that Chris dealt with comfortably, and Adrian had to be alert to divert out a shot with the goalmouth at their striker's mercy. Besides that, Chard and his defence were never seriously threatened.

As the second-half resumed, the backline was totally revamped with Keong replacing Sin, Max coming on for Tee Oon, the injured Chris going off for Adrian, and Man taking his place beside Chard whereas Benni was introduced at the expense of Wei. Unfortunately, barely 10 minutes into the game, Chard injured himself going into a tackle and Rambler's libero had to be subbed. Benni was then moved back to the defence, pushing Poay into a striker's role and Au coming in at midfield. The sudden reorganization did unsettle Rambler's for awhile and De'Butterfly took advantage of it by increasing their tempo. And it was not long before the substitute keeper was called into action, rushing off his line twice to cover the striker's shooting angle for the marksman to pull his shot wide and once dealing with a long freekick.

But normal order was resumed shortly after up the other end when Ah Or, Shukor and Poay carved open De'Butterfly's defence time and again but failed to finish off their chances. As the minutes ticked away, desperation became evident in Rambler's play. Keong and Max were overlapping at will down the left and right respectively while Ah Or took on 2 to 3 players each time he had the ball at his feet; the young gun drawing numerous fouls from the panicking De'Butterfly defenders. However, this left the backline exposed with only Man and Benni available to thwart off their counter-attacks, one of which resulted in their striker shooting directly at the grateful custodian.

And so, as in many games, Rambler's domination without being able to capitalize on it proved to be their undoing when a long freekick, after Au was caught offside and with Keong out of position, allowed the De'Butterfly winger a clear run on goal and he lobbed the ball over the advancing Adrian to break Rambler's hearts. A jubilant De'Butterfly then proceeded, in the words of Mourinho after a game against Totenham, to “park a bus” in front of their goal and dented Rambler's hope to climb up the table and rue their luck once again.

Final Score:

Ramblers 0 – De'Butterfly 1