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Balestier set to tweak spending policy
Tam Cheong Yan
info@sleague.com
Balestier Khalsa could be poised to make notable changes to their spending patterns in 2010, as they look towards strengthening their squad for the upcoming season.
The news comes after the Toa Payoh-based club had finished bottom of the league for a second consecutive year, an incidental outcome of the club’s current youth-based policy.
Under the policy, Balestier filled most of their roster with inexperienced players who were in their early twenties, many of whom had come through the club’s age-group ranks.
The result was a squad that often lost out to opponents who were populated with more seasoned players, thus keeping them in the lower reaches of the table in recent years.
But after years of living frugally, the Tigers’ financial position appears to be slowly improving, giving them a little more spending power this time around.
And club vice-chairman S. Thavaneson has promised to use some of that extra cash to recruit some older heads in a bid to lift the club off last place.
“Some of the youth players we have been developing have come through the system, and are ready to be considered full-fledged S.League players,” he told sleague.com.
“But these boys are still young, so they need some players with experience to start guiding them through. So our plan for 2010 is to strengthen the team with perhaps four more experienced players to link up with the group that has been coming through.
“Our revenue streams for this year have enabled us to take off most of our carry-forward losses, which is really heavy baggage. Now we can inject more of our money towards getting the better players we are looking for.
“We will certainly put up a far stronger challenge in 2010. I think our performance will be far better, and I am confident to say we are not going to finish in our ‘usual’ position.”
The club’s finances will be further improved through streamlining of their payroll, which currently also includes players not registered with either the S.League or Prime League squads but are nonetheless still contracted with the club.
While cases like defender Mushthafa Kamal – who remained with the club despite being deregistered in July due to injury – will continue to be honoured, Thavaneson indicated that the club will be working with a squad of about 18 players on their senior roster.
Mushthafa will return to action for the Tigers next season along with midfielders Han Yiguang and Anantha Rajan, both of whom have already pledged their services for 2010.
Several other players such as Sofiyan Abdul Hamid, K. Vikraman and Poh Yi Feng are understood to be close to clinching new deals with the club as well, after they had shown satisfactory progress throughout the season.
Some of these players could also look forward to receiving better remuneration in the coming year, in what coach Nasaruddin Jalil described as “cutting bigger slices of cake”.
The former Singapore international stressed the importance of this budget policy shift as he spoke about bringing his team up to a new level.
“The money is there for us to spend, and actually we have already been spending,” he said.
“But then, we shared the cake between quite a number of players this year, and we are trying to reduce the numbers next season. We’ve had this pool for the last few years, and it’s time we identified the better ones to keep.
“The objective in the last two years had been to expose the players to a certain level of football. If you look at our performances in the last few games, I think the players have been quite reasonable, although there are still certain areas to improve on.
“We want to keep the better players to gel with the senior players we want to bring in. If we want to strengthen the team, we have to strengthen the individual salaries within the team, so that we can put together a decent team that can compete week in, week out.”
While many of Balestier’s local players will be retained, it will be a case of all change as far as the club’s foreign legion is concerned.
Chilean midfielder Julio Eduardo, who had fallen below Anantha, Han and Syaqir Sulaiman in the Tigers’ pecking order, will leave the club upon finishing his year-long contract on 30 November.
Also making their exits are the Korean trio of Oh Ddog Yi, Oh In Kyun and Jun Jin, while Australian defender Jamie Alan Pitt could also be on the way out.
In their place will come four new faces to strengthen both the attacking and defensive lines, with aerial prowess identified as a key criterion for selection.
“The foreign players we had in the first half were, to put it bluntly, not up to standard, and that is why we had to make changes,” recalled Thavaneson.
“In the second half, we strengthened the side with the three Koreans. Two of them performed well in the early part and then started fading out towards the end, and unfortunately Oh Ddog Yi had a severe injury after only a few games.
“We have decided to go for four new foreigners, and we’re wanting height in these players. That means we are no longer looking at players who are just five foot six or five foot seven.
“We’ve got two defenders coming in, one of whom is about 1.94m and the other’s about two metres tall. We were conceding a lot of goals from set pieces and corner kicks because we simply didn’t have the height to challenge, and we want to change that.”
Despite the club’s bold new plans, Thavaneson was quick to stress that the Tigers are not turning their backs on the youth policy they had run for the last few years.
Noting that the realities of the football market demanded that smaller clubs like Balestier must make the most of what little money they have, the 61-year-old pointed at spending on the future rather than the immediate present as the way to go.
“We are not giving up on the youth programme,” he said.
“I believe you must have the guts and the perseverance to see a programme through. In fact, we will invest more money into the Prime League, so that we can keep the flow of future players coming through.
“If you look at this year’s release list, there are only a handful of quality players available in the open market. Big clubs like SAFFC can just go into the market and buy new players they need.
“We are never going to have that kind of luxury, so we have to make sure our money is well-spent and we can get every dollar’s worth back from the players. Investing in the youth programme is how I think we can do that.” |
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