Wait and see how many points they can get in the remaining games of the season. #HoiKing #HKPL #hkfootball pic.twitter.com/vI9c0VFBmJ
— Patrick loves sports (@ptsportsfans) 20 January 2019
Source:
https://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/2182989/hong-kong-premier-league-title-race-thrown-wide-open-after-hoi-king Hong Kong
Hong Kong Premier League title race thrown wide open after Hoi King shock hopefuls Southern
- Bottom club gets first top flight win and prevents Southern from taking top spot
- Top five teams are within three points with over half the season played
Hoi King’s Philip To (24) and Southern’s Dhiego Martins (19) battle for the ball. Photo: HKFA
Anyone can beat anyone is what they say of the English Premier League but it is more true of this season’s Hong Kong Premier League.
Nowhere more so than at Sham Shui Po Sports Ground on Sunday afternoon where the shock of the season was delivered.
Title challengers Southern were beaten by new boys Hoi King, a team that finished eighth in last season’s First Division but were promoted because the teams above them shunned the opportunity to go pro and join the top flight.
Southern had beaten champions Kitchee in their last league game while Hoi King had lost 6-2 to Pegasus, which came on the back of a 5-0 defeat to R&F.
Hoi King also lost the reverse fixture against Southern 3-1 back in September. This marks their first win in the Hong Kong Premier League and only the second match where they have won any points after a 0-0 draw with Yuen Long in December saw them get off the mark.
Roberto Santos was the man to make history with a 75th minute winner, the substitute coming off the bench to score on his debut.
With four points from 10 games, they are averaging 3.6 goals against them per game and scoring less than one goal per game. Their heaviest defeat was 8-1 to Kitchee.
OMG! Southern, who just beat Kitchee last weekend, just suffered a 0-1 defeat to bottom-of-the-league Hoi King. Massive result. #anyonecanbeatanyone #hkfootball #HKPL
— Football in HK (@offsideHK) 20 January 2019
The shock win means that Hoi King are only two points behind Dreams in ninth and Lee Man in eighth – both of those teams have six points.
The top of the table is similarly close after 10 games. R&F are top on 20 points, one point ahead of Eastern in second spot. Southern are third on 18 points having wasted the chance to go top against Hoi King, the same total as champions Kitchee in fourth. Tai Po are fifth on 17 meaning that the top five are separated by just three points.
Last season Kitchee went unbeaten to win the league by 13 points. We might be in for an even tighter finish than the 2016-17 season when Kitchee pipped Eastern by two points, leapfrogging their rivals in the final game of the campaign.
The 2018-19 league season is 18 games long and concludes in May with the next round of league matches starting February 15.