Al Arabi will be keen to resurrect their QNB Stars League campaign when they take on bottom club Umm Salal at home today. Arabi are coming off back-to-back defeats to Al Sadd and Al Duhail last week and are eager to get back to the winning ways in their bid to be back among the elite top four.
Arabi are fifth in the standings with 18 points, five behind Al Gharafa. While Umm Salal are lying bottom of the table with eight points, they are buoyed by their 1-0 victory over Al Khor last week and will look to build on it as it will help them get off the basement.
Al Arabi had beaten Umm Salal 5-1 in the first leg but Arabi coach Heimir Hallgrimsson expects a tough match this time around. “We are ready to face Umm Salal and our target for this match is three points. We have a difficult game against an opponent that did not start well, but they have improved now and beat Al Khor in the last round,” he said.
“We must win all points of this match because this will have a significant impact on the team’s final ranking. We will try to achieve this target. In the last game against Al Duhail, we deserved at least a draw. The winning mentality was not present for several years, especially when we played against some teams. There was a kind of panic. It takes time to change this mentality of players and develop a winning mentality. It will not happen overnight. I started working in that direction ever since I took charge of Al Arabi. I am happy that everyone supports us in order to create a team that will compete for titles in the future,” Hallgrimsson added.
Meanwhile, Umm Salal are are facing relegation threat along with Al Khor and Al Shahania. Umm Salal and Al Shahania have same number of points, but the latter are placed above by virtue of better goal difference (-15).
Umm Salal coach Aziz Ben Askar said his players are on high after win over Al Khor and hope to continue the winning momentum. “It will be a difficult match because Al Arabi are a big team with huge fan following in Qatar and they are playing on their home turf. In the last round, we started a new chapter and we have new players with high spirit. I asked them to focus, play and think professionally as they did in the last match against Al Khor. That is the key to get back to winning path. If we want to keep winning, we must keep our focus,” he said.
“All team, players and technical as well as administrative staff, are working hard. The players know their task well and they must forget the past in order to restore balance and get positive results for Umm Salal. We need to know the importance of every ball and every attack, for us or for the opponent. We have to think that we have an opportunity to stay in the first division and must fight to achieve this difficult target because football is very difficult,” Askar added.
Al Ahli take on Al Khor
In another match today, Al Ahli face Al Khor at the Al Ahli Stadium. Al Ahli go into the match fresh from their morale-boosting 1-0 win over Al Sailiya, while Al Khor had lost 0-1 to Umm Salal.
It was The Brigadiers’ first victory under new coach Nebojsa Jovovic, who replaced Ruben de la Barrera. Al Ahli, who did not make any change to the squad in January transfers, are eighth with 16 points. On the other hand, Al Khor (in 10th place with nine points) are very much in the danger zone, alongside Al Shahania and Umm Salal.
Al Khor, in their bid to improve their results, had offloaded Brazilian Wagner Ferreira and recruited his compatriot Lucca Borges, who represented Al Rayyan in the 2018-19 season, in the winter transfer window. Al Ahli had beaten Al Khor 3-2 in the first leg.
from Gulf Times https://ift.tt/2GCBfFG
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