Jamaica Premier League leaders Mount Pleasant FA suffered their first defeat of the season last weekend when they went down 1-3 to Tivoli Gardens.

Today at 3:00 pm at Sabina Park, they face another West Kingston team and the hottest team in the league at the moment, Arnett Gardens.

Arnett have won their last four games and are unbeaten in their last five and will provide a real test for Wally Downes’s men.

After winning their first four games and seemingly cruising in the league, Mount Pleasant have won just one in their last four and saw their lead at the top whittled down to just goal difference at the end of match week eight.

Today they face an Arnett aggregation bubbling with confidence and ready to test their true mettle.

Steve Green is the second-leading scorer in the league with five goals and will need to be in good form today for Mount Pleasant. Arnett have let in a few goals so far this season and Green will be looking to expose their backline from the wings.

At the other end of the pitch, Renaldo Cephas will no doubt be a threat to the Mount Pleasant defence. Strong, powerful and a willing runner with the ball at his feet, Cephas has scored and assisted with goals from his position on the left flank. Ladale Richie and company will need to pay close attention to the Arnett hitman.

The only thing separating the two teams that are tied on 17 points is their goal difference. Mount Pleasant boast a +11 while for Arnett it is +5. Today it will be a matter of who defends better, but, more importantly, it could be about who takes their chances.

Arnett Head Coach Paul “Tegat” Davis will be looking to get one over his former employers as he continues to engineer the resurgence of the former premier league champions.

The feature game, which starts at 5:15 pm, will see two teams that are struggling in the lower reaches of the table.

Humble Lion in 10th place are the only team yet to win a game this season and have drawn six of their eight matches, while losing the other two. With a goal difference of -5, it tells just how many problems face the Andrew Price-coached team.

To make matters worse, they have not been able to hold on to leads when they have managed to get in front in games, a worrying trend for the head coach who is a former defender himself.

However, today they come up against the worst team in the league, who have a new man with no premier league coaching experience at the helm.

This game provides possibly the best chance for Humble Lion to get their first win and Price will be desperate for his boys to finally put a tick in the “W” column of the tables.

They will, however, have to get the job done without their captain and talisman Andrew Vanzie, who is expected to miss 8-10 weeks with a broken metatarsal bone in his left foot.

Leacroft Lettman has been thrust into the deep end in his first spell as a coach in the Premier League. He inherits from Englishman Ricky Hill and stand-in Coach Dwayne Ambusley a MoBay United team that is low in confidence and unable to keep a clean sheet.

They have the worst defensive record in the league, having conceded 18 goals from eight games at an average of 2.25 goals per game. They have scored just seven goals which indicates that things have not been great at that end of the pitch either.

The challenges for Lettman are lengthy and his abilities as a coach will be tested immediately.

A man from the West, Lettman has been given a tough test to prove his character and the Cornwall College old boy will be hoping that he can do just that.

His first match as head coach will not be his most difficult and he will be hoping that his team responds to whatever lessons were taught to them since they lost 0-1 to Portmore United on Monday.

— Dwayne Richards