The Boss Spoke About The Clash Against Minerva Punjab FC And The Need To Carry On. Excerpts…
On his side’s performance on the night…
I’m happy with our performance. We dominated most of the game, created a lot of opportunities and closed the opponents down well. We did enough to win the game, but that’s how football is sometimes. There were chances we could have finished but now we cannot look back; we have to keep going.
On the change in formation in the second half…
We need to adapt our formation based on the game. We can’t give the opponents space and give them chances to score. I’m sure we could have scored in the second half as we were ourselves creating more chances. I think we were a bit nervous as we only had a one goal advantage but we continued to create chances.
Unfortunately they scored in a very strange situation and that was bad for us. We tried everything to get one back but unfortunately we were unable to score and are disappointed in dropping the points. We have to look forward and do better in the coming games.
On what the team would have to do if they were to go on and win the title…
We are not in the best position to say that we have to fight for the title. We have to fight, we are not giving up. Mathematically, we can still win the title and so we should just do our best in all the remaining games. For now I plan to concentrate on doing well in the next game against Aizawl, we have to try and recover a few players and ensure we play as a team and will all our games.
On his side’s defensive display …
I think we were quite good defensively against Punjab. Both Sandesh and Ranjan did a good job and were comfortable at the back, even Sena Ralte and Khabra played very well. Although we were missing some key players in defence, I was happy the others who came in and took their place. It was unfortunate that we conceded a goal, but I must say that I am very happy with the way we played.
On his message to the players at half-time and the morale of the team…
When you do not get victories it affects the morale of the team. But we were sure of scoring in the second half as we created quite a lot of chances in the first half. We knew that Minerva would be tighter in defence as compared to other teams but we had to press if we wanted to score goals. We did lack a little bit of quality in the final third of the pitch.
On Chhetri playing a more central role in future games…
We decided to make the change as Chhetri was more effective in the center and the results were there to see and Eugene is skilled enough to carry out a wide role comfortably. We have tried everything in tactical terms, but the result is what it is and we have to move on.
