Red and Golds eyeing full points against Minerva Punjab FC
Kolkata: East Bengal coach Trevor James Morgan is pleased with the effort of his boys against the defending champions Bengaluru FC on Sunday. The Red and Golds came from behind to clinch the tie against the Blues at Barasat Stadium. Bengaluru led through a goal from CK Vineeth while Evan Bukenya and Robin Singh scored for the Kolkata giants. The gaffer took a lot of positives from the win against Bengaluru.
“Yeah, it’s not really changed anything within the team. The players realized if they can work hard what they can get from it. The players were absolutely shattered when they came in after the last game because of the effort they put into it. There was a lot of positive from the match specially winning it after going a goal down.”
East Bengal with the win on Sunday is currently placed second in points table behind Mohun Bagan. The Red and Golds have so far garnered 10 points from 4 matches. On being asked whether he is feeling the pressure of arch rivals Mohun Bagan winning all their four matches so far, a relaxed Morgan said, “We had all this in the Calcutta League, exactly the same. It’s not about now; it’s about after the last game of the season. We will just try to win every game that we play. The players can only take kind heart from the other night. We didn’t do that. But the players had done that. They have set the bar, that’s the standard and we can’t afford to drop ourselves below that standard.”
The gaffer is pleased to see the progress of Arnab Mondal who is on course to take the field against Mohun Bagan on February 12 at Siliguri.
“Arnab will be match fit in another 3 weeks time. I would imagine he would be ready then. We need to try and get him involve in a game so as to assess his condition, just to find out whether we can start with him in a match. Even Robert is also nursing an injury. We will try and fix a friendly so as to assess their fitness.”
East Bengal will be flying off to Punjab on Thursday to take on I League newbie Minerva Punjab FC. The gaffer has seen the Punjab side playing against Chennai City FC on TV.
“I have only watched them play against Chennai City FC on TV. I know some of the players who were under me couple of seasons back. We just have to go out there and play for a win.”
Md Rafique missed training today as he had to go and play a office match.