We took punch on nose, will bounce back, Owen Coyle motivates the team

This was the Scotsman's first loss against the Blues as Jamshedpur manager.

Jamshedpur were on the losing side against resilient Bengaluru FC, after a hat-trick of wins. The loss means the Men of Steel are now one point behind the Blues. Jamshedpur were slowly heading towards another narrow win after the first minute strike from Daniel Chima. But, Bengaluru bounced back in the second half and scored two goals within eight minutes. The third goal from Cleiton Silva in injury-time guaranteed the three points. Disappointed by the performance, Owen Coyle admitted his team made mistakes. Here are the excerpts from the post-match press conference.

Thoughts on team’s performance

Jamshedpur FC were dominant in the first half and had fair chances in the other half too, but failed to convert those.  When asked if the team deserved to win, Owen Coyle said, “Well, I’m not sure we deserved (the win). The fact is right that they took their chances. I don’t actually think TP (Rehenesh) has a save in the game. I mean, a long throw and a corner, we should’ve dealt with that. So, there were individual mistakes. We had some wonderful chances and Gurpreet (Singh Sandhu) made some real saves,” the tactician stated.

“We certainly deserved something from the match. But, that’s the margin in ISL, a very tight league with some very good teams like Bengaluru. We certainly did not deserve to lose. But, if you are going to make mistakes, that all happens and we made really bad mistakes tonight. We missed the skipper tonight, he is vocal and he organizes the defense well,” he continued.

Did loss come at wrong time?

Before this game, Jamshedpur were in a strong position to challenge for the top spot and secure their place in the playoffs too. So, did the loss come at the wrong time and how will it affect the team's chances?

Owen Coyle answered, “Well, we are coming off three wins back-to-back, so we have been doing very well. We were stuck in the room for 15-16 days and not much training and had few players missing tonight. In the first half, scored a wonderful goal and could’ve added to that. So, that’s the nature of the league. We took a punch on our nose and we will look to bounce back very quickly.”

On Greg Stewart not scoring 

Greg Stewart took the first half of the season by storm, but he lacked that touch in the last few games. The coach Owen Coyle shared his views on his goalscoring issues.

“No, Greg was outstanding tonight. I mean that was a wonderful clearance off the line. Sometimes, you score goals and sometimes you won’t. But, Greg Stewart is outstanding. What he brings to the game we are excited because he is such a wonderful talent. So, it's nice to score goals, but he could’ve easily scored a couple of goals tonight. So, we don’t have to worry about that.”

Updates on Komal Thatal & Jordan Murray

“Komal had the recurrence of his hamstring injury. We were hoping to have him available today, but he failed again. So, he will (take) another few weeks now.

"Jordan Murray again because of the time he was in the room, he had only two days of training. We hopefully have him in the next game,” Owen Coyle signed off with these two important updates.

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