FC Pune City bagged their first win of the Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL) 2018-19 with a 2-1 victory over Jamshedpur at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium in Pune on Wednesday. A late goal from Matt Mills sealed the victory for the Stallions after Diego Carlos and Sumeet Passi scored for Pune and Jamshedpur respectively in the first-half.

At the post-match press conference, Pune interim coach Pradyum Reddy lauded the work his troops had to put in to achieve the all-important victory. "It was a tough game. It took a collective effort from every single person to win this game. It was hard work out there, but we have shown that if you put in the hard work, you can get the rewards," he said.

Ashique Kuruniyan put in a solid performance on the night for the Stallions, bagging the Hero of the Match award in the process. Reddy was full of praise for his young midfielder but stated that he still has a long way to go. "Yes, we are really glad to see how Ashique has been progressing. If you look from last season to this season, we have been asking him to be more consistent with his performances because we know the talent he has. But he has got to start producing it week in week out and I thought he was fantastic today and unlucky not to get a goal," Reddy said.

The 42-year-old was also pleased with the fact that his entire squad was available for the encounter and said, "We are just taking it one match at a time. We never had all our players available. We had injuries and suspensions before. Today was the first time that I had a full squad to choose from and you can see the difference in the way they played."

From Jamshedpur’s end, head coach Cesar Ferrando shared his thoughts on the loss. The Spaniard cut a disappointed figure, expressing his dissatisfaction with the way things panned out. "I am disappointed, not because we lost the match. I think we could have tried more. We have a certain style of play and we play like that everywhere we go. At this moment, I think we could have tried more during the match. I am very disappointed with the result. But that’s a part of football. We need to improve in defence and keep more clean sheets. We need to improve the way we attack," he said.

Click here to read the match report.