Chennaiyin FC’s head coach Bozidar Bandovic said that he’s happy and satisfied with the team performance, especially with the way his team played the last game against ATK Mohun Bagan ahead of their Hero Indian Super League (ISL) encounter against Mumbai City FC at the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru stadium in Margao, Goa on Wednesday.

Bandovic is confident that his team will do well against the attack-minded Islanders on Wednesday.

Ahead of their clash, Bandovic and striker Lucasz Gikiewicz addressed the media during a pre-match press conference.

Here are the excerpts from the coach’s press conference:

It’s been a couple of weeks since the club came out with a statement on Rafael Crivellaro. So how has he been progressing? Is there any further update you can give us?

Bandovic: He's doing the light sessions at the moment. So he needs to rest more to recover. Until this moment it's almost two months without training with the team.

Are you happy with the formation 3-5-2 that you deployed in the previous match against a strong team like ATK Mohun Bagan?

Bandovic: I think we had a good performance. We did believe that moment we were ready to change the system, to see how we are doing. And I believe that the players did very well inside the field. So both in terms of attacking and defending, we had a very good performance. I’m happy with the last game. For tomorrow's match, we will see what we want to use.

We saw Lukasz (Gikiewicz) make his first start in the tournament against ATK Mohun Bagan. Were you satisfied with his performance and was benching Rahim a tactical decision or did you feel that Lukasz deserved a chance to start?

Bandovic: I think he deserves to start. I was thinking of using him against SC East Bengal as well. So he deserved the start because every time he comes on from the bench, he helps the team. I believe he did well last game of course. We are waiting for him to do more and score more goals.

Mumbai City FC has played an intense brand of football with high pressing this year how will you look to tackle that?

Bandovic: We analyse them and we have seen all their games. They’re a very good team and we have one plan, that we will stick to it. I talked with the players and we are doing this, so I hope through that we are going to have a good performance.

Coach since you're given the responsibility of captaincy to Thapa he’s done really well. So do you think that added responsibility has made him up his game? Is there any change because he got the responsibility?

Bandovic: About the captain it's very clear to me that he deserves to be the captain, this is his team. With his personality and character and staying many years in this team, he is the best man to lead this team. But this doesn't have to do anything with performance and he’s working hard in the training and challenging himself. I talked to him and told him this is not enough he can do more.

Here are the excerpts from the player's press conference:

Lukasz you played on Saturday you're playing tomorrow and then like another match on Saturday so like three matches in seven days how quickly as a player have you recovered?

Gikiewicz: You know all players like to play every two or three days, it’s good to have more game time than sweating out in training. For us, it is good to play every three days. We recovered well and we are ready for tomorrow.