Bambolim (Goa): Odisha FC will be looking to pick up from the 4-2 win over Kerala Blasters in the previous match when they face fellow strugglers Chennaiyin FC at the GMC Stadium on Sunday. Chennaiyin have managed just one win in their last eight games and their captain Rafael Crivellaro has been ruled out for the season.
Chennaiyin let in four goals against Hyderabad, the same number they conceded in their first four matches. They also suffer from having a misfiring attack, having scored just eight goals which is the lowest in the league. Coach Csaba Laszlo admitted that the team needed to do some introspection after their lacklustre performance in the last match.
“I think the last game’s performance was bad,” said Laszlo. “I don’t want to run away from this because altogether we made a lot of mistakes. I think after this game, everybody in my team has to go and think about it. From the first minute to the last, we were not really in the picture. We have to change, we have to analyze the mistakes and we have to go back to where we were before.”
Stuart Baxter’s Odisha, meanwhile, will be hoping to pick up from their thumping victory over Kerala. Their win came on the back of an inspired performance from 22-year-old Indian forward Liston Colaco, who scored twice to put the team 4-2 ahead. It was the first win of the season for Odisha. They also seem to have found an unlikely creative force in Jerry Mawihmingthanga, who now leads the ISL charts for assists along with Hugo Boumous.
“It’s important to the degree that we needed to get those three points to give the players the belief and the confidence to continue the roll around,” said Baxter. “The players did a fantastic job in retaining their confidence and their belief despite the results being against us sometimes quite unluckily. But, we do need that to gain a little bit of momentum and now hopefully, we can kick on.”
Ms Kalinga AI