Can Young Lions finally dislodge themselves from the bottom of the Singapore Premier League?

Given they are developmental team traditionally made up solely of under-23 players, with a primary objective of developing the country's most-promising youngsters for the senior national team, Young Lions have never been expected to challenge for top honours in the Singapore Premier League .

When they were first founded over two decades ago, the Young Lions managed two impressive third-place finishes early on but have since failed to achieve a top-half finish since 2007.

Even with expectations tempered, however, it is safe to say that the last three years have been extremely disappointing for the Singapore age-group team.

Finishing dead last in each campaign, Young Lions only managed seven wins from in that time -- and four of those came in 2021.

In the past two seasons, they won just three out of a possible 52 matches with the 2022 campaign even seeing them conceding a staggering 102 goals from 28 outings.

And as the de-facto national U-23 team, apart from a handful plying their trade with other SPL teams, Young Lions' poor displays naturally translated onto the international stage.

There was an abject showing at last year's Southeast Asian Games where they managed just one point from four games and even finished bottom of their group on goal difference below traditional minnows Laos , who they had drawn 0-0 with.

The campaign ended on the lowest possible note as they were thrashed 7-0 by bitter rivals Malaysia and, subsequently, the Football Association of Singapore made the decision not to send the team for the Asian Games later that year.

But having plummeted to such depths, the only way most times is up.

And while the 2024-25 SPL campaign is still in its infancy, there is reason for Young Lions to believe that this could be the season they finally shed their status as cellar dwellers.

Six rounds into the new season, Nazri Nasir's young charges currently find themselves 6th in the nine-team competition.

They have already bettered last season's tally of a solitary victory and, prior to last weekend's narrow 3-2 loss to Balestier Khalsa , had won two games in a row for the first time since 2018.

The first of those victories was a remarkable victory over reigning champions Albirex Niigata (S) , who admittedly have made a shockingly slow start to their title defence but still led twice in the game and as late as the 79th minute before a late rally from their opponents.

A week later, Young Lions found themselves trailing 2-0 to Tanjong Pagar United and somehow once again pulled off a comeback for a 3-2 triumph again -- courtesy of another winner in the final ten minutes.

Wherever it may have come from, their newfound belief and resolve -- when they previously might have crumbled -- is primarily the driving factor behind the optimism that Young Lions could be turning a corner this term.

The presence of foreign signings, a policy readopted last season, has obviously helped as it has at least put them on a more level playing field with the rest of the competition.

With just two imports in 2023 in the form of the unrelated Jun Kobayashi and Kan Kobayashi, the Young Lions overseas contigent has expanded to six and, in particular, striker Itsuki Enomoto has been a crucial presence up front with five goals to his name already -- a tally bettered only by compatriots Tomoyuki Doi and Kodai Tanaka of Geylang International and Balestier respectively.

For a footballing nation that has not always had the best of luck in unearthing attacking talent, apart from the likes of Khairul Amri and brothers Ikhsan Fandi and Ilhan Fandi over the past couple of decades, the added bonus to Enomoto's bright start to life in Singapore is the fact that the Young Lions' foreign player policy unofficially dictates that there should be the potential for naturalisation -- which would allow such players to represent the national team in the future.

Overseas talent aside, Young Lions' improvement has also been fuelled by continuity within their ranks, which has provided stability as well as enabled several prospects to step up in their second season in the team.

Newly-appointed captain Farhan Zulkifli made a bright start to the campaign although he has had to bide his time on the bench recently, while goalkeeper Aizil Yazid continues to show why he is an outstanding long-term prospect -- especially with Singapore's dearth of options between the posts below the age of 25.

Then, there is also the fact that -- quite simply -- there are a couple of teams that look worse outfits than Young Lions so far in 2024.

Of the three teams below them on the table at present, Albirex can be expected to eventually improve even if defending their title may be a bridge too far in what was always going to be a challenging year as the former satellite team of the J1 League club of the same name transitioned to being a fully Singaporean outfit.

While Tanjong Pagar did finally claim their first win at the weekend, they and Hougang United -- who are winless in six outings -- look like they could be set for a season of struggle.

Still, true progress for Young Lions should not simply arise from the demise of others and, ultimately, where they sit on the table is not necessarily correlated to how healthy the future of Singaporean football is.

If they are to dislodge themselves from the bottom of the SPL, the true value of that will lie in it being of their own merit.

Based on what they have displayed so far, things are hardly as gloomy for Young Lions as it has been for a while.