The decision was greeted with anger from the home fans but the goal stood.

The Beijing Guoan defence also stood firm – the side have conceded just once in the CSL this season giving them the meanest defence in the league and they were not giving that up.

Hebei created as many chances as the visitors despite surrendering possession to them and the hosts also had nine corners. Beijing Guoan custodian Zou Dehai made a string of saves to preserve the clean sheet and hold on for the win.

Guoan knew what they had to do in Langfang after Guangzhou Evergrande had caught up with them at the top of the table on Friday night. Evergrande left it late against Shandong Luneng but it was not for lack of trying. They had 18 shots but only got a winner when Anderson Talisca scored his second of the night in the 95th minute to settle the game 2-1 in Fabio Cannavaro’s side’s favour.

The gauntlet was laid down and it was met with another three points and six wins from six.

The Beijing club have never made such a good start to a season – not even when they won their only league title in 2009 – but not everyone is getting carried away.

“Guoan lacks experience in contending for championships,” the club’s general manager Li Ming told Xinhua. “And the newly built team with management personnels, coaches and players are still getting along with each other. Third, more of our players got in the national team, so we have a short squad.”

Sadly, some people were literally carried away as the status of fans in Chinese football took another beating.

Several Beijing Guoan supporters were detained by the local Langfang police, who took exception to a fan group marching down the street with pyros and drums.

The Langfang police Weibo account confirmed that six Guoan fans have been detained for between six and 15 days for disturbance of public order and hindering police doing their duties among other charges.

That, on the back of ticketing troubles earlier in the week and complaints from Beijingers, meant even fewer Beijing Guoan fans made it to the game.

General admission tickets to the stadium were made available to anyone as long as they did not have a Beijing household registration.

Further to that tickets in the away section of the 30,000 capacity Langfang Stadium were limited to just 1,000 – with the vast majority of them going to members of the club’s organised supporters groups rather than on general sale.

This “fans second” attitude is nothing new in Chinese football, of course, but it is at odds with trying to grow the sport.

Fair play to Hebei – the side need all the help they can get right now. The loss dropped Chris Coleman’s team to 12th and they have only one win so far this season.

The enduring image of Saturday’s game was the Welsh manager crossing his arms over his face after El Kaabi’s late overhead kicked bounced past the post.

Coleman, who was appointed midway through last season, will need to see a change in results soon or the club will likely act again.

Time also might be running out for Dragan Stojkovic at Guangzhou R&F. His side were beaten 5-1 in Nanjing by an Alex Teixiera-inspired Jiangsu Sainty side.

The former Yugoslavia international has been in charge of the side since 2015, a lifetime at a Chinese club, as evidenced by him being the longest serving manager in the league.

That won’t be the case for much longer and the honour would go to none other than Roger Schmidt.

The German was named manager of the month for March and will be sure to make it back-to-back awards if they keep up this run next week at home to the inconsistent Dalian Yifang.

Schmidt put pen to paper all the way back in July 2017 and Guoan’s reward for sticking with him might be the biggest prize of all come the end of the season.