By the way, what do we make of Ngan Cheuk Pan's performances? With Huang Yang retired and Tan Chun Lok injured, the HK team seems to have settled on Ngan over Wu Chun Ming as their main midfield orchestrator.
Kowloon City seemed to had fell apart within the first half after Li Hon Ho sustained an injury and had to be substituted during the early stages as Kitchee scored five past the club with goals from Welthon, Aaron Rey, Poon Pui Hin, Ruslan Mingazov and Juninho. However, Ruslan Mingazov picked up a red card on what appeared to be a small stamp on Kowloon City's Ho Lung Ho during the final minutes of the first half.
HKPL Eastern 1:0 KC Southern Tai Po 2:1 HKFC Kowloon City 0:5 Kitchee Northern DIstrict 3:3 BC Rangers
Ngan Cheuk-Pan is not really good enough, as veteran Lee Kin-Wo commentated during the HK Mauritius match. The defensive midfielder situation is a very weak point for HK right now. Wu Chun-Ming is only so-so, he can defend but his vision, passing and distribution are poor. I can see Fernando being used as a defensive midfielder sitting in front of the centre backs. He can take the ball upfield and actually create something. But he is no spring chicken and I doubt he can last the entire EAFF E1 Cup preliminaries.
North Korea has been removed from the match schedule of the EAFF E1 Cup preliminary tournament. That leaves Guam and Macau playing for a place in the final. So Chinese Taipei could be the biggest obstacle to Hong Kong SAR's path to the EAFF E1 Cup final tournament.
Whilst it seems that Hong Kong are now pretty much more or less the firm favourite to win the preliminary competition now that North Korea withdrew, I just hope that Ashley Westwood has everything planned knowing that a Chinese Taipei side under former HK manager Gary White is not going to be a simple task.
We must know that Gary White and co will be thinking the same thing... they know that their biggest obstacle now is just against HK. I hope that Tan can recover in time to beef up our midfield! And I hope the Gerbig at right back experiment is over.
FT: Lee Man Vs Nam Dinh - 0:3 Not a great start for Lee Man's new manager Matt Holland in which his side fell against the home side Nam Dinh by three goals. Overall, Lee Man just couldn't seem to get much into the game especially when Nam Dinh gained most of the possession.
Nevermind the result, the big takeaway was that Holland copied Westwood's tactics and used Dudu in the libero role. Perhaps Dudu is consideration for the DM role in Westwood's starting XI.
It was rather clear that Lee Man depended on individual brilliance to achieve their results. But against a proper football team it was clearly not enough. Rosa, Anier and Everton hardly ever interchanged passes. All the defenders and midfielders tried to do was whack the ball up field hoping that someone would latch on and score. Everton sent a good far post corner kick to Paulissen, but all Paulissen did was send it over the bar when two Lee Man players were waiting in the middle asking why he didn't head the ball to them. I think that summed it up rather well. Actually it is the main theme of Hong Kong club football. It is what most teams do. Kick it up field for the expensive foreigner to do it all on his own.
Eastern were no match for Sydney FC as the Australian club cruised past the team with four goals despite Noah Baffoe pulling a goal back.
Hong Kong rose two place in the rankings and is past Yemen in the Asian Cup qualifiers ranking in pot 2.
Tan Chun-lok will remain sidelined with a knee injury until mid-January after re-aggravating the injury earlier this month against Lee Man. He has been ruled out for the EAFF qualifiers. #hkfootball pic.twitter.com/kGwhR9cstz— Football in Hong Kong (@offsideHK) November 29, 2024
The draw for the third round of the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers will take place on December 9th: It will be interesting to see who will be drawn with Hong Kong. But to everyone, which teams do you want Hong Kong to be drawn with?
I just saw on SCMP that Guam is now considering pulling out of the EAFF qualifiers, is there any truth to this?
Kitchee's Jay Haddow has confirmed that he applied for naturalisation in hopes of represent the national team in the future. Should he obtain his HKSAR passport next year, hopefully he will be considered for the U23 team for next year's 2026 AFC U23 Asian Cup qualifiers at least.
Here is the final 20-man squad named for this month's E-1 EAFF Preliminary qualifying rounds: Goalkeepers YAPP Hung Fai (Eastern), TSE Ka Wing (Tai Po) Defenders Oliver Benjamin GERBIG (Dalian Yingbo), Alexander Christian JOJO (Eastern), Fernando Augusto AZEVEDO PEDREIRA, Leon JONES (Kitchee), Luis Eduardo CHEBEL KLEIN NUNES (Lee Man), Nicholas BENAVIDES MEDEIROS (Tai Po), TSUI Wang Kit (Yunnan Yukun) Midfielders YU Jesse Joy Yin (Eastern), NGAN Cheuk Pan (Kitchee), WONG Wai (Lee Man), CHAN Siu Kwan Philip (Tai Po) Forwards NG Yu Hei (Eastern), Awal MAHAMA, Stefan FIGUEIREDO PEREIRA (Kwoon Chung Southern), SOARES BELITARDO JUNIOR Walter (Kitchee), Everton CAMARGO (Lee Man), ORR Matthew Elliot Wing Kai (Shenzhen Peng City F.C.), Michael Chibuikem UDEBULUZOR (VfR Mannheim) Shinichi Chan and Sun Ming Him both miss out as does Poon Pui Hin and Lam Hin Ting.
This further increases my worry about the match against Chinese Taipei... I hope I will be proven wrong. Yue, Tan, Shinichi, and Sun are some of our best players...
Honestly this midfield is very light weight and can be overrun by the opposition rather easily. Chinese Taipei coach Gary White knows us from his short time here and he might know how to exploit our weaknesses.
And we only have Ngan Cheuk Pan (and maybe Fernando) to play the all important CDM role - for 3 matches. This is quite a test for Ngan, I'm just hoping that since it is a 20 man squad they will call 3 more players up later. I would at least call up Wu or Lam just to help bolster that CDM position, let Ngan rest against Mongolia for 45 minutes or something.
I will agree that the midfield list is awfully lightweight with only Yu Joy Yin, Wong Wai, Chan Siu Kwan and Ngan Cheuk Pan listed. But when I checked on the E-1 EAFF East Asia Cup preliminary qualifier squad list, it seems that Juninho, Stefan and Ng Yu Hei are also listed as midfielders as well. What I will say is that I do hope that Westwood has a clear plan and is wary of what Gary White's Chinese Taipei side is capable of doing in which I know they will give his side more of a challenge. I'm sure that the players will be wary of some of the players with Ange Koume as well as newly naturalised striker Jhon Benchy Estama.
However, Juninho / Stefan / Ng Yu Hei will either play on the wings or in a CAM role - none of them can really play a CM role, let alone a defensive CM. Additionally, how are we feeling about our CB's? Do we keep using Fernando as a CB / roaming player, and risk Leon Jones getting caught out by speed? Problem is none of our other CB's have any speed - Dudu and Helio's legs are probably well gone by now...
Eastern's final ACL2 campaign ended with another loss to Sanfreece Hiroshima despite Ng Yu Hei's fantastic solo effect on goal. I can pretty much see why Ng Yu Hei is becoming one of the more promising youngsters of Eastern.
Eastern actually wasted a couple of good chances in the second half. Bertomeu had a one on one opportunity but he surprisingly tried to pass to Noah Baffoe, the pass was blocked and returned to him and his shot was blocked again. Then Noah Baffoe had a goal disallowed for offside. It was a very close call. These ACL2 games show that two of our 18 year olds Ng Yu Hei and Timothy Chow are very capable players. Hopefully they can go on to greater things.