Morais pleased to meet targets against Melaka

After suffering their first Super League defeat of the season in the previous match away to Kuala Lumpur, Johor Darul Ta'zim quickly redeemed themselves with an easy 3-0 win over Melaka United on Saturday night.

Luciano Figueroa, Jorge Pereyra Diaz and Ignacio Insa all got on the scoresheet as they move past Terengganu FC who won on Friday to be on top of the league table at this point in time.

JDT were at their free-flowing best in the first half and the way things were going, looked on course to even repeat their 7-0 mauling of the same team in the corresponding fixutre last season. However a drop off in the second half meant that the score stayed the same but Ulisses Morais remained pleased with what he saw.

"It's true that the performance of Johor Darul Ta'zim players in the first half was very good, but went down in the second half. As you can see, we controlled the ball and had a lot of scoring chances in the first half. We also know the players did a good job."

"Although we scored three goals in the first half, the match was not over for us. In the second half, we had to prepare for a response from Melaka. We need to consider about the players' physical conditions and substitutions were made because we need to prepare for the upcoming match in the next few days.

"However, what's the most important thing is that we gained three points tonight," said Morais in the post-match press conference.

The manner in which the first half progressed also meant that Morais could give some key players a rest, and start to think about the upcoming midweek match against Vietnam's Song Lam Nghe An.

"As for the substitutions, during preparations for the match, the coaches already informed Marcos that his condition would not allow him to play the full 90 minutes at this time. We also needed to rest Safiq Rahim because he received a yellow card." 

"After bringing off Safiq, we also brought off Cabrera because his physical condition was not too good. He is also one of the players we need to monitor," added Morais.

JDT will now be on the road for the most of the next forseeable week, first to get to the Vinh Stadium for the AFC Cup match then a return flight to Malaysia and another trip to Sabah for an FA Cup encounter.