Sugiyama wants more from perfect Albirex

The Japanese side, who retained just four players from this 2012 roster, saw his charges follow up last week's victory over Harimau Muda with a 2-1 triumph over Home United at the Jalan Besar Stadium, ensuring they joined Tampines Rovers and Tanjong Pagar United as the only teams with a perfect record after two weeks of the 2013 season.

Although the Protectors had taken the lead through Indra Sahdan Daud's 54th-minute header, Kento Nagasaki hit back for the White Swans five minutes later with a terrific curling strike, before centre-back Kento Fukada popped up with an injury-time winner to hand his side all three points.

The victory was slightly fortuitous given Albirex had been pegged back by Home for much of the game, forcing Sugiyama to admit his side still have plenty of room for improvement.

"All of our players played well and did not give up till the end," he said in the post-match press conference. "But it wasn't a good game on our part.

"I think we can improve more as we did not control the game. I believe we can dominate the game, so that's why I think I'm not satisfied with the performance. 

"We did not find our free man and we did not find the right passes either. 

"Today [Friday], Home dominated the game. Even though we won, if we cannot dominate the game then we may not win like this in future matches."

The ex-Urawa Reds defender also admitted his team were fortunate to pick up all three points given Home had been disciplined and organised for much of the 90 minutes.

"Yes, we were lucky," Sugiyama added. "But my players put in a lot of hard work so I am satisfied as it was a good performance. 

"They [Home] were very organised and also played very well. I like it when teams are organised and disciplined. 

"We can do more, we can improve over time. We want to improve and play better next week against Hougang United."

Home coach Lee Lim-saeng, on the other hand, was left flabbergasted when pressed to explain the reasons for the loss as he felt his side had been the better team overall. 

"I think we played our best in the game," said the former-Korea Republic international. "Unfortunately, we couldn't score many goals.

"I don't want to blame the players - we prepared very well.  I think we made more chances than Albirex but they took the chances that came their way.

"That's part of football, I guess. We will discuss things after the match and see how we can learn from it. 

"I can understand the criticisms you may have but I cannot agree that opponent played better than us." 

Lee's disappointment was clear for all to see as he called time on his press conference, asking to be excused after a few minutes.