Shanghai East Asia’s winning streak is still alive, but only just. The China League One leaders got out of jail in the dying seconds of their clash with the underperforming Guangdong Sunray Cave after Lv Wenjun’s winner gave them a 2-1 victory and improved their winning run in the CL1 to seven games.
The hosts were the stronger team in the opening exchanges and Luis Carlos Cabezas and Lv both had good chances to open the scoring whilst Wu Lei looked to have been tripped inside the penalty box only for the referee to ignore East Asia’s appeals for a penalty and order the midfielder to get to his feet.
However, Guangdong held firm in the face of the East Asia onslaught and then went onto to take the lead with twenty-seven minutes played when East Asia failed to properly clear a corner kick and the follow-up cross was rifled home by Leung Chun Pong.
Rattled, the league leaders came forward with even greater conviction and having already seen one free kick come close to creeping over the line, saw another dead ball effort flash just wide of the Guangdong goal. It would be the last real chance East Asia had in the first half and the home side went into halftime down 1-0 and scratching their heads about how exactly they were losing a match they were dominating.
Whatever had been said at halftime obviously worked for the home side and within ten minutes of the restart, East Asia had equalised when substitute Zhen Zhengrong, having made a darting run down the left flank, delivered a perfect cross into the box that Cabezas headed home with aplomb.
Knowing that other results were going their way, East Asia knew they couldn’t drop afford to drop any points and should have scored again with sixty minutes played when Zhen shot agonizingly wide after good work from the increasingly influential Lv.
Yet for all their chances, East Asia were losing their cool at the critical moments and as the game drifted into injury time, it looked like they were going blow a real opportunity to increase their lead at the top of the table.
However, having gone close on several occasions earlier in the game, Lv was on hand to rescue the day in brilliant fashion when he drifted into the penalty box to collect Wu’s frantic pass before taking a touch and smashing it high and hard into the net for the dramatic winner.
The players had barely finished celebrating when the full-time whistle blew and East Asia could celebrate a lead at the top of the CS1 table that had increased to seven points following Lv’s timely strike.
In other CS1 scores, second place Hunan Xiangtao and third place Tianjin Songjiang both drew 1-1 with Shenzhen Ruby Beijing Institute of Technology respectively, whilst Harbin Yiteng moved up to fifth after beating Hohhot Dongjing 1-0 at home.
