El Jaish tower over 'The Boss'

Dubai - Lamouchi happy his side beat Al Ain whom he considers the strongest in the group

Al Ain bossed the fixture and topped every statistic there was to top but 'The Boss' still returned empty-handed from Doha.
The inaugural champions of the AFC Champions League, backed by their travelling Al Ain faithful's, threw everything at El Jaish. But it still wasn't good enough as they lost 2-1 at the Abdullah bin Khalifa Stadium in the Qatari capital.
The result follows on from an identical loss in the first leg at the Hazza bin Zayed Stadium, a little over a week ago.
And it meant that the Garden City club are yet to open their account in Group D and are placed right at the bottom. They are now left with a big mountain to scale if they harbour any hopes of still making it to the next round.
And while Al Ain was left disappointed in Doha, a little later in the UAE capital, their Abu Dhabi neighbours Al Jazira too suffered the same fate. 'The Spiders,' who were blanked 4-0 by Tractorsazi Tabriz, lost by a solitary goal to the Iranian opponents, at the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium.
Like Al Ain, Al Jazira too hasn't logged any points and are the basement dwellers in Group C. Dubai's Al Nasr were the only one to come through this week, with a 2-0 victory over Iran's Foolad Mobarakeh Sepahan.
The first half was a total domination by Al Ain with their star playmaker Omar Abdulrahman at the forefront of their repeated sorties.
But El Jaish, who were content to lay deep in defence and play the counter, opened up in the second half and the normally tight Al Ain backline showed signs of cracking.
The Al Ain defence fumbled with a clearance four minutes after the break and El Jaish didn't need a second invitation. Hamed-Allah Abderrazzaq then cut across and fired it past goalkeeper Khalid Eisa into the far corner of the net as defender Mohammed Ahmed was left ball-watching.
That opened up gaping holes in the Al Ain defence and El Jaish put the game to bed through substitute Yasir Isa, 11 minutes from time.
Hamed-Allah set it up with a neat through from the right and defender Isa, who had come on for midfielder Othman Al Yahri, hoodwinked Khalid Eisa before firing it into an open goal.
Al Ain did pull one back through substitute Saeed Al Kathiri, who popped up to send his powerful header from eight yards. That kept them interested with four minutes of regulation time remaining. And they did come up with a few last-ditch efforts but eventually ran out of time.
Al Ain coach Zlatko Dalic rued the mistakes that were repeated.
"I'm disappointed with the defeat against El Jaish once again as we made the same mistakes that we made in the previous match," said Dalic.
"The two goals made things hard for us to take something from the match. We made individual mistakes which affected us and was the reason for the defeat. I talked to the players about the strengths of El Jaish and we played with two forwards to try and level the score but the second goal killed the match," added the Croatian.
Meanwhile, El Jaish coach Sabri Lamouchi said that the three points against a top team like Al Ain was vital. "The three points that we got were really important. We defeated one of the strongest teams in the group," said Lamouchi.
"The players performed well and they took advantage of their chances to score two goals. We are now in a good position in the group but there is still plenty to play for and we should not underestimate the other teams," he added.
Meanwhile, Bakhtiar Rahmani notched his third goal in two games by firing the match-winner against Al Jazira. Rahmani, who had fired a brace in their 4-0 win in the first leg, scored just after the half-hour mark.