Defending champions Chennaiyin FC finally got their maiden win of the Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL) 2018-19 season, and did so in style, beating FC Pune City 4-2 at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium in Pune. The away team went into half-time trailing by one goal but turned things around in dramatic fashion in the second half to eventually claim a victory.

Chennaiyin head coach John Gregory was a happy man during the post-match presser as he lauded his boys’ effort. “Well, it’s been a long time coming. I personally think we’ve played in some very close matches before today. And we haven’t really got the results that we deserved. I think some of our football has been excellent in previous games and we’ve never really got a break. We gave away a couple of goals due to mistakes at the back and consequently, they’ve proved vital. But today, I think, things changed a little bit as our boys never lost their desire or their professionalism even though we were 1-0 down. They continued to keep playing."

He also praised the team for their character in face of adverse conditions and revealed, "We’ve had 6-7 boys who had a virus in the last week or so. They played two games. One on Saturday and one again tonight. Calderon was in the hospital on Saturday after the game. He had to go away from the ground in an ambulance to be treated. He’s one of the players who played again tonight, and in the end, he had to come off because he was feeling so ill. There have been few of them that have been sick with various viruses and sicknesses. But they kept going and they all wanted to play. That’s the beauty of some of these guys."

After opting to leave club captain Mailson Alves on the bench in Chennaiyin's last few matches, Gregory gave the Brazilian a start tonight and he proved to be the inspiration the team needed. Alves not only scored the equaliser, but also provided the assist for the second goal. "I had my no. 27 back in the team tonight and he certainly was a little bit more like he was last season. He scored a goal and defended particularly well. And it was good to see the old Mailson back again. So, delighted with the opportunities we took,” Gregory gushed.

His opposite number, Pune's interim coach Pradyum Reddy, was left to rue his team’s inability to see out matches even after taking the lead. He agreed that he had to address the issue sooner rather than later, but also suggested that fatigue played a major part in the defeat. “I mentioned it after the Goa game that we’re not fit to last the 90 minutes at the moment. And you can see we can play 45 minutes of very good football. There’s a lot of issues to fix. One obviously is the fitness of the players. So, we’ll have to fix things that can be fixed in a short period of time. With three games in 10 days, we’ve fixed the defensive organisation. That was very evident in the first half. We looked very organised, very compact and difficult to break down. We still created chances. And that’s what enabled us to go into half-time 1-0," Reddy said.

"Again, similar to the Kerala game, in the second half, we had little bits of concentration lapses which happens due to fatigue, lack of concentration. The first goal, lack of concentration by the covering players and then the second goal. We lacked some leaders in the team at a stage where we needed someone to calm the team down, protect it at 2-1, and then change the game. We had 20 minutes of madness, and that cost us the game,” he added.

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