Terengganu: An Open, Attacking Side Short of a Defence

Terengganu's season has been built on a simple trade-off: score enough goals to stay in the game, and hope that trade favours you more often than it costs you. Across twelve matches it has been a roughly even exchange, four wins, two draws and six defeats leaving Mohd Shafily bin Jusoh's side fifth in the table, comfortably clear of the bottom three but with real hope of finishing in the top six and a play-off spot.

The pattern has been visible from the opening weekend, when a 5-4 win over USM set the tone for a side willing to trade goals rather than shut games down, a tactical instinct the league's own coverage has previously described as a willingness to throw men forward and employ the powerplay even at defensive cost. That approach has produced some spectacular afternoons, a 9-1 win over Wipers among them, and some equally chastening ones, heaviest of all an 11-3 defeat to Selangor in Circuit 7 that arrived only a week after Terengganu had run Pahang Rangers close in a 6-4 defeat.

At the centre of almost everything Terengganu have done well this season is Alif Mat Amin, a repeat Player of the Match winner whose goals have kept the side competitive even in defeats, and Mohd Hafizi, whose hat-trick in a battling 6-6 draw with USM in the most recent round underlined the same attacking instinct that has defined the campaign. What Terengganu have lacked throughout is anyone with the same consistent influence at the back, a defence that has conceded 59 goals across twelve matches, more than every side above them in the table.

With two circuits left, Terengganu's position looks essentially settled. Thirteen points clear of bottom-placed Wipers but six adrift of KL City in 4th, their realistic hope is a 5th or 6th place finish. A repeat of their early-season habit of scoring three or four and still losing would be a frustrating way to finish, but on the evidence of matches like the draw with USM, this remains a side capable of entertaining even when the underlying numbers suggest they should be doing rather more to protect what their attack creates.

The frustration for Terengganu, watching their own numbers, is how often games that looked competitive at half-time have finished as routs. Both meetings with Pahang Rangers followed a similar shape, goals traded in the first period before the gulf in squad depth told in the second, and the same pattern applied in the heavy defeat to Selangor in Circuit 7. It leaves Terengganu as one of the more watchable sides in the division on a given weekend, and one of the more frustrating to support across a full season, torn between an attacking approach that keeps them in most matches for periods and a defensive record that too often decides them.