As several Buriram United players live quite close to me, soccer is naturally a very hot topic with the local soi residents.
When Suchao and Tunez kick a ball with the little soi kids outside my place, a sizeable crowd materializes from nowhere. The Mums' in particular love their football team.
So .... the less than perfect season so far for BU has got the tongues wagging. "What's going wrong this year ?" they ask.
Well .... I'm no expert, but I've learned to enjoy the game since moving to Buriram. It's the only game in town after all.
I've made some interesting statistical observations about Buriram United looking a bit ordinary, compared to 2015, when they were so dominant.
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2015 Buriram kicked 93 goals in 34 TPL games. (Ave 2.9 goals per game)
Their two main strikers, Diogo and Macena got 54 of them. Neither has played a single game this season. That's a lot of firepower gone missing.
Macena has knicked off to greener pastures, and Diogo got a dislocated shoulder on 24th Feb
Diogo's injury at the time was reported as "a 3 week injury". He's been out for 75 days now (11 weeks)
In 2015 Diogo was named Thai Premier League "Most Valuable Player", and he also received the "Golden Boot Award" for being the TPL leading goal kicker. (33)
Hard to replace 2 key strikers with the above talents.
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2016 season so far sees Buriram United languishing in 4th place.
In 10 games, they've only scored 17 goals (Ave 1.7 goals per game) That's a huge difference to last year.
More worrying still is the fact that Tunez is the leading goal kicker with just 6 goals. What's the worry ? Well ... he's a defender, not a striker. He plays Centre Back, and the only guy that's supposed to be behind him is Buriram's goalkeeper !!
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Anyway ..... whatever.
The sun will still come up tomorrow I guess, but Buriram will need to pull their finger out pretty soon and find a way to score more goals.
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It seems the fans have not yet deserted their struggling team (by BU's own lofty standands). Crowd numbers are up 3% on this time last year.
INVINCIBLE was Newin's proud proclamation last year. Hmmmmm .... BU look decidedly vunerable this year.