Guangzhou R&F hammer Henan Jianye

Abderazzak Hamdallah and Davi both scored one from the spot and one from open play as their Guangzhou R&F side dispatched Henan Jianye without needing to reach top gear. Two first half penalties, the second dubious, knocked the stuffing out of Henan and the blue and whites relaxed the tempo in the second period.

Sven made three changes from the team that lost to Beijing last week as Davi, Zhu Baojie and fit again Jiang Ning came in for Li Yan, Chang Feiya and the suspended Park Jong-Woo. Henan brought last week’s goal scorer Ryan Johnson into the starting line-up in place of Nando Rafael.

The sunny weather could hardly have been more different from the monsoon like conditions of Hangzhou game and after this sections of the turf had had to be relaid giving parts of the pitch a checkerboard effect. R&F got off to the best possible start when a Henan defensive error and clumsy lunge from goalkeeper Zhou Yajun conceded a penalty inside the first ten minutes which Davi converted.

Henan’s main threats were to come from set pieces and their best open play move ended in Marques hitting the side netting after Jiang Zhipeng switched off and allowed the Brazilian to escape his attention. The Cantonese had the majority of the play though and doubled their lead when Ken Ilso, who was much more impressive this week in a more advanced role, was harshly judged to have been fouled in the box. This time it was the Moroccan Hamdallah who scored the penalty with a cheeky chip down the middle.

Henan’s vocal away support

Two goals up after a little over half an hour and R&F seemed to think the job was done and instead of piling on the goals as against Hangzhou they eased off and almost let Henan back into the game. Backed by a decent sized and vocal away support, Henan won a corner from which Li Lei had a free header inside the six yard box but Cheng Yuelei blocked it and the blue and whites went into the dressing room 2-0 up.

R&F started the second half as they had the first as they scored another goal. This time a great Tang Miao pass curled behind the defence and allowed Hamdallah to tap in after 53 minutes.

There was more to celebrate soon after as substitute Wang Xiaolong played a beautiful through ball for Davi to race onto and fire into the roof of the net. The Brazilian’s double promoted a small group of his fellow countryman to grab the drums from a home supporters section and the West stand of Yuexiushan briefly rocked to the rhythms of the samba.

Ken Islo looked much better in a more advanced role

With the points secured and the heat and humidity in Guangzhou oppressive, R&F eased off the pressure after this and the Henan players too were clearly feeling the effects of the weather. This lethargy continued for the remainder of the game with only odd injections of pace from Lu Lin and Wang who was guilty at times of trying to do too much on his home debut and a few long range shots from the visitors.

Henan return to Zhengzhou to host Guizhou on Friday night whilst R&F will hope to continue their impressive start to the season as they make their first trip to the dongbei region to face Changchun.

Guangzhou R & F: 1 – Cheng Yuelei 20 – Tang Miao, 5 – Zhang Yaokun 15 – Jang Hyun-Soo 11 – Jiang Zhipeng 7 – Jiang Ning (57 minutes 23 – Lu Lin), 36 – Zhu Baojie, 10 – Davi, 18 – Zhang Yuan (80 minutes 33 – Li Yan), 9 – Hamdallah 27 – Ilso (66 minutes 19 – Wang Xiaolong)

Henan Jianye: 1 – Zhou Yajun 2 – Li Lei (46 minutes 14 – Huang Xiyang), 3 – Gibril Sankoh, 5 – Gu Cao 6 – Tan Wangsong, 18 – Xu Yang, 8 – Zhang Lu 22 – Zhu Yifan, 19 – Yin Hongbo, 9 – Johnson, 20 – Marques (46 minutes 11 – Nando Raphael)