Gladiators Stay Positive Ahead Of Sime Darby Clash

23 April, 2015



PETALING JAYA: Despite enduring a tumultuous time, Armed Forces are in high spirits ahead of their bottom-of-the-table clash against Sime Darby FC.

Just last week, they were in a crisis after head coach B. Sathianathan was relieved from his duties. Assistant coach and former Kuala Lumpur player Shahrin Majid is now in charge of the Gladiators.

And to add to their woes, national striker Norshahrul Idlan Talaha and winger Christie Jayaseelan left for Terengganu and Felda United respectively.

But Shahrin feels that their 1-1 away draw against Sarawak last Saturday is a positive start to a new beginning and hopes the players can build on it with a win against basement side Sime Darby at the Tuanku Abdul Rahman Stadium in Paroi on Saturday.

“The morale of the players have improved following the draw,” said Shahrin.

“I thought we did well because we were playing away and Sarawak have a strong home support. The players dealt with the situation well to snatch a point.

“But we need to keep up the pace and we have a good chance of collecting maximum points against Sime Darby.”

Armed Forces are on five points while Sime Darby have picked up only one point after eight matches.

Sime Darby crashed out of the FA Cup when they lost 3-0 to Kelantan in the second-leg of the quarter-finals on Tuesday.

“Their players might still be a bit fatigued from that away match. So we aim to take advantage of that.”

Shahrin also added that without Norshahrul the team have to work harder to score. They have only scored seven goals in their eight league matches.

“We definitely have problems in attack and I have been working on it during training and hopefully we can get more in the coming matches.”

Sumber - Joash Ee De Silva, Star Online www.thestar.com.my