The defense remains a concern as we saw today and Delgado’s injury cost the team heavily. Does the team lack a leader in the backline during the crunch times?

I don’t think we need to try to find excuses about the injuries. I think this is not the reason we lost the game. Obviously, it’s difficult for us, to lose players, two players in the first half. This situation didn’t  allow to me to do substitutions in the second half to change the dynamic of the game because we started very badly at the second half of the game. Because I have only one window about the substitutions and I have a long time ahead. The problem was not the injuries, but losing focus and doing big mistakes. The, big problem was, today we were in Odisha but we lost. If you can see this game, maybe it’s one of the worst games we played as far as I remember as a coach. 60 minutes like this? We were not loyal in our style of play. We are losing the ball easy using a lot of long balls, playing against a team who is comfortable playing like this. We didn’t win any second action. We conceded goals in the second half. And we showed last season that we are mentally strong. We can come back in difficult situations. But today, for a very short period of the game we used the focus and concentration and then allowed the opponent team to kill us finally. We need to learn. we need to put the foot on the floor and we need to know if we are not being loyal in our style of play, then we are not a strong team. And if we are playing like today, we are going to have more problems, a lot of problems, because finally it’s disappointing to see a lot of people coming to the stadium today and get them this kind of a game. Because finally you can lose, you can win, you can draw. But not like this, we need to learn. We need to improve and myself first as coach. We need to analyze a lot of things, but also the players we need to put the focus in the next game. We need to improve in a lot of things if we want to be competitive. And it will help us to be in the top positions in ISL because after today’s game playing like this, for sure, we are not going to be there.

Narender Gahlot’s defensive vulnerabilities were exposed once again. Does being a starter puts too much pressure on him?

No, I don’t think so. I think Narender is a player who is playing in the national team. He has a lot of games in ISL. We have to move this season, and we need to try to find a solution in terms of the foreign players, where we want to use these foreign players. We believe we are playing with Diego, with Boumous so we need to play with one central back Indian player, but we cannot put the focus today in only one player. I think today was a disaster starting for me as a coach. But the fullest plan, I don’t think today the problem is only with one or two players. We need a play as a team. We didn’t come back on time, we lost the ball very easy, we didn’t have 10 passes in the first half, even in the second half. Finally, we tried something more with the head, but this is not the way we need to play.

Are we sensing anything serious about Carlos injury?

Seems serious, but we need to check. He needs to go to the hospital, but now he’s with a lot of pain and let’s see what happens. But, most probably we are going to lose two players for some period of time. After the break, maybe we are going to have these players on, but let’s see what happens. Because Carlos is a very strong, strong player but today the situation is not good. Thank you.

Note: This is a transcript of the post match press conference. Please watch the video of the press conference below: