Just A Few Things: JDT Vs. Perak

Credit: Johor Southern Tigers

Switching It Up

It looks like Mehmet Durakovic had to tweak his starting line-up due to missing livewires Careca & J. Partiban due to hamstring injuries according to Star reporter T. Avineshwaran. Instead of going with his usual 4-4-2 formation with two forwards, Durakovic opted to go for an attacking midfielder in Firdaus Saiyadi to support Guilherme De Paula. In a way, it’s a 4-2-3-1 but it was also a 4-4-2 with Firdaus seen beside Guilherme when out of possession. 

For the first ten minutes, Perak do have a plan to try and breach the JDT defence. They  were more direct in their passing to find Firdaus, Guilherme or Shahrel Fikri by going long over the JDT defence line. It worked to some degree as some of those passes did go over the defence, but it went a little too long. Perak did this for the first ten minutes and actually looked decent. But...

Seven Star Quality

When the quality is on point, there’s almost nothing Perak can do but just try your best to stop them (Spoiler alert at the end: they didn’t do their best and that’s putting it lightly). When JDT opened the scoring (More on this next), the floodgates opened and a massacre happened before our very eyes. JDT never took their foot off the pedal as they kept going & going and duly showed no mercy to their visitors.

Gonzalo Cabrera continues to be influential down on the left as he scored a hat-trick, even when he is not scoring Diogo Luis Santo would find a way to contribute with three assists on this night, then it was another good night for a certain young winger which we’ll talk about later and let’s not forget the quality JDT has on the bench as Safawi Rasid & Akhyar Rashid reminded us of how good they are with well taken goals late on after excellents runs (Although Safawi could’ve got a couple more). This is by far the scariest JDT team since Tunku Ismail took over seven years ago if you look at who they have at their disposal. This match is a stark reminder of how big JDT are and the question now is, who can stop them?

A For Afiq

He just keeps getting better. Afiq Fazail continues to be a grade A engine in a Lamborghini named JDT. The midfield once again dominated the Perak midfield and Afiq continues to be an important cog in the heart of it for JDT, especially in the passing department. It was Afiq who opened the scoring with a spectacular curling strike that left the Perak keeper no chance even at full stretch. Afiq then played a crucial role in getting JDT’s fifth goal when he played a low cross for Diogo who then teed up Cabrera for the easiest of tap-ins (More on this later). His engine room presence is a sight to behold with his passing & work-rate as it showed once again.

The Dream Continues

It was intriguing to see whether young forward Ramadhan Saifullah is able to build up his impressive debut last week against Pahang. So did he do it? Yes, he did. The winger again never put a foot wrong and looked settled in the starting line-up as his dream debut season for the senior team continues to march on. He was again selected ahead of Safawi on the right-wing and gave Rafiuddin Rodin something to think about. He then came up with a cracker of a goal with first-time searing strike coming off a Perak clearance header.

It looks like JDT has a ready made replacement already in Ramadhan on the right wing as the youngster continues to impress. Benjamin Mora giving him starts to prepare him for a much bigger role next season is definitely a wise move indeed considering that Safawi is set to leave for Portugal once the league ends.

But A Nightmare For Bos Gaurus

Shambolic. Awful. Inspireless. Those are some words to sum up Perak’s performance. Questions will now be asked about why Nasrullah Abdul Aziz was selected ahead of Hafizul Hakim as the latter was named on the bench. The poor 22-year old looked out of sorts with his questionable decision-making and poor communication. To be fair, he did make a few good saves, but he shouldn’t have started here against a scary JDT team. His ugly side of his performance was perhaps summed up during JDT’s fifth goal when he was nutmegged by a floored Diogo to set up Cabrera completing his hat-trick.

The defence was just as awful. Looked too casual as seen on JDT’s second goal, though it was a well-placed goal by Cabrera. They then allowed JDT space to work with in some cases as they didn’t close them down quickly enough and they were completely outclassed by a stellar JDT attack in pace and power. And don’t get us started with the rest of the team. This was Perak’s biggest defeat since losing to Kelantan 6-0 in 2012 and by far Durakovic’s worst loss ever to the Southern Tigers since he started managing in Malaysia as his record against them continues to be bad (1D 9L after tonight). Sure the gap in quality could not have been more glaring, but there was almost no heart and shape at all in that Perak team tonight as all their earlier plans were thrown out of the window. How will they even pick themselves up from this?