Chennaiyin FC suffered a 1-0 setback against Mumbai City FC at the Mumbai Football Arena on Sunday. Achille Emana’s penalty made the difference in the end, as the result was perhaps a bit harsh on the visitors, given that they put in a good performance. Speaking to the media during the post-match press conference was Chennai’s head coach, John Gregory.

To begin with, the Englishman rued the chances missed by his team. “We missed far too many chances; the game would have been over by half time,” he repented. “And we still had chances in the second half, before the penalty. We did not take the chances, but it was a one-sided affair.”

He also revealed why he benched some key players like Gregory Nelson, Jeje Lalpekhlua and Raphael Augusto. “Because they have to play 18 games,” he explained. “We had three games in a week. They are tired, the amount of work that they’ve put in to the four games prior to tonight, you need to rest people. And they are in a certain situation where if they would have started tonight, they would have had a serious injury and we’d lose them for a month or six weeks.”

Before wrapping up, he highlighted the areas of improvement for his squad. “We have to keep the ball a bit better,” he stated. “Sometimes we gave the ball away in certain situations where we did not need to. We could have kept the ball possession a bit better. We were a bit impatient sometimes. In the last part of the pitch, we tried to kill the ball sometimes, where keeping the ball possession would have been much better.”