June 11, 2004

Radojko Avramovic was stunned by the scoreline as it was Singapore worst international result in 14 years, since the similar 7-0 massacre at the hands of South Korea in the Asia Games in Beijing in1990.

National team administrator Eugene Loo admitted the national coach could not sleep in his hotel room after the loss against Oman & all he did was chain smoke.

Only 4 months ago in Goa, after the Lions lost by a solitary goal to India, Avramovic was similarly disconsolate.

Radojko Avramovic admitted he was disappointed as the score does not reflect what exactly happened in the match, but he has to accept it.

He was surprised Oman had 5 attempts in the first-half & scored 4 as they scored with virtually every shot they took at Singapore. It was unbelievable for the Serb-Montenegrin.

While he did not dispute the fact that Oman were clearly the better side, he said that five of the seven goals could have been avoided. 2 were long-range efforts & 3 were from dead ball situations just outside the Lions' penalty area.

Avramovic said that he had already planned his next course of action. He has requested a videotape of the match & will introduce changes after reviewing it. He said while he has an idea of what happened, he will save my judgement until after he reviewed the video.

While it would be easy to point fingers at the defence, especially with the 7 goals conceded, Avramovic refused to be drawn on whether any defender, or any others for that matter, would be axed.

He said he will only decide after he watch the video.