Fozil Musaev’s goal after 34 minutes at Prince Saud bin Jalawi Stadium settled the Group D contest in favour of the central Asians as they set-up a clash with China while also ending their opponents’ participation in the competition.

"It was a very hard win for us as we knew that Thailand are a strong team," said Ubaydullaev.

"We expected them to cause us a lot of problems and that was clear in the game.

"We played a strong game but we concentrated more on the defensive side while counter-attacking well and we could have scored more goals."

Ubaydullaev also revealed his plans suffered a major setback before kick-off as Davron Mirzaev was ruled out through injury and he is keeping his fingers crossed the forward would be fit to take on China on Saturday.

"We were hit before the game with the injury of Davron Mirzaev," he added.

"We really missed him today and I hope that he can recover in time before the quarter-finals.

"We will try our best to prepare for the quarter-finals and I hope that the players will be ready."

Thailand coach Kawin Kachendecha rued the fact that his side failed to get back into the game despite having several chances in the second-half but stressed the 71st minute dismissal of Sutjarit Jantakol clearly affected his side.

"We only played one way today as only a win was good enough for us if we wanted to continue in the competition," he said.

"It’s time now to say good bye to Saudi Arabia as we are now out of the competition. We gave away an easy goal in the first-half and we couldn’t come back in the second. We did everything today, we brought in extra strikers but we couldn’t score.

"Uzbekistan played a good defensive game, they were at their best in the defence. We also played with one man down midway through the second-half and it affected us.

"We used two strikers but it didn’t work for us. We tried our best to come back but the players were down," added Kawin.

"Our team is not that strong as our players lack international experience and this was clear in the games that we played."