Hegelmann II put five past FA Šiauliai II in the 1st Liga's regular season on Thursday, wrapping up the twenty-third round with a comfortable win at home. The scoreline tells you everything, and then some.
Both sides arrive in this fixture having played twenty-two matches already. Hegelmann II sit twelfth with nineteen points, three wins and a draw from those six victories. Šiauliai II are fifteenth on fourteen, their three wins and five draws not quite enough to climb much higher.
By then the visitors had held 57 per cent of possession, but that number means very little when you look at the shots. Hegelmann II hit nine on target compared to Šiauliai II's two, and the difference between those figures is the match in a single sentence. to be fair, the hosts did not dominate the ball, but they made their chances count.
We had called this one earlier, giving Hegelmann II the win at 38 per cent confidence. Not a high number, but the result confirms the reading: a side that had been struggling for consistency found a way through against a Šiauliai II team that looked uncomfortable without the ball. and here's the thing, the away side's recent form — a win, a draw, a loss, a win, a loss — suggested they could bounce back. They could not.
Hegelmann II's last five results read 0-3, 3-2, 1-2, 3-1, 0-4. They have lost fifteen of twenty-two, but this performance carries more weight than the table suggests. Šiauliai II's run — 1-2, 1-0, 1-4, 1-1, 1-0 — showed they could pick up points, but not against a side that decided to finish the job.
The gap between them moves from five points to eight. Hegelmann II remain in the lower half, but they have now shown they are not a side that sits back and waits. by then the visitors had no response, no momentum, no reason to believe they would change the pattern.