Our Asia-Pacific Tour concluded with a comfortable victory over Lion City Sailors on Wednesday as a second-half hat-trick from Richarlison and goals from Harry Kane and Giovani Lo Celso gave us a 5-1 win at the Singapore National Stadium.

With Sunday’s scheduled game against Leicester City in Bangkok postponed due to the adverse weather conditions, Head Coach Ange Postecoglou will have been delighted to get more competitive match fitness into the players, with 22 of the squad used in the game.

It was a one-sided affair as we dominated possession and created a whole host of chances, yet found ourselves trailing after 14 minutes. Maxime Lestienne delivered a teasing ball into the box, Pedro Porro slid in but couldn’t cut it out and Shawal Anuar got the final touch to loop the ball over Guglielmo Vicario.

James Maddison was at the heart of most of our opportunities and was denied three times by Lion City goalkeeper Zharfan Rohaizad, while he showed superb quick feet to dribble past three players but his ball across the face of goal was cleared in the 24th minute.

Shortly before the interval, Pape Matar Sarr’s volley skimmed the crossbar and Rohaizad kept out Dejan Kulusevski’s effort from a tight angle before we deservedly drew level. Sarr was tripped inside the box by Rui Pires – who played against us for Pacos de Ferreira in Europa Conference League action in August, 2021 – and Kane made no mistake with the resulting penalty.

As we did against West Ham in our first pre-season friendly, we changed the entire team at half-time and within seven minutes, Richarlison had scored twice. His first came when he tucked home the loose ball after Lo Celso’s effort hit a defender and the Brazilian international then snaffled up a poor back header from Pedro Henrique to head past Rohaizad for 3-1.

It continued to be very much one-way traffic in our favour and Ivan Perisic almost added our fourth but fired inches wide from a tight angle, while Richarlison was initially denied a hat-trick with two goals ruled out for offside.

Manor Solomon then struck the post with a volley before creating our fourth goal on 73 minutes, his low ball from the right deflecting off Rusyaidi Salime into the path of Lo Celso, who smashed home from close range.

The hosts – third in the Singapore Premier League with three games left to play – kept plugging away and went close when Hami Syahin fired over from the just inside the area. But we wrapped up the game in stoppage time with Richarlison finally completing his treble, latching onto Emerson Royal’s pass and slotting it past substitute goalkeeper Adib Azahari to give us victory in the Tiger Cup.