After three back-to-back away fixtures, ATK return to the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan in Kolkata to take on Chennaiyin FC on Thursday in their Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2017-18 tie. The reigning champions currently sit eighth on the points table and enter the match on the back of a 0-3 loss to FC Pune City. On Wednesday, the hosts announced Technical Director Ashley Westwood as Teddy Sheringham’s interim replacement, having parted ways with the latter on the same day.

ATK’s pre-match press conference was attended by Westwood who was asked to share his thoughts on taking over from the former Manchester United striker. “I think interim exactly means, in the short-term,” he began.

“Regarding the difficulty, I’ve been a head coach before. I’ve coached for three years in India. I don’t see any difficulty. I’m confident in what I do and with regards to that, it’s part and parcel of football. It’s part and parcel of being a coach. As a head coach, you have a job to do and it’s not difficult at all.”

The former Bengaluru FC coach gave a summary of how events folded in the ATK camp that eventually saw Sheringham getting the sack. “I got a phone call last night, around 8-8.30 pm. It was the CEO (Raghu Iyer). He just had a meeting with our owner (Sanjiv Goenka) and relayed his thoughts that the campaign hadn’t gone as they had envisaged. They were looking for a new head coach and asked if I would help in the immediate future,” he revealed.

“Obviously, I have a contract with the club as technical director. I have a responsibility to fulfil that role. Whatever the owners want me to fill in, I’ll help. Be it grassroots, the youth team, the first team, sweeping the terraces, whatever they want. I’m here to help the club and that’s what I’ll do.”

A change in management usually brings with it extra pressure on the new coach, but the Englishman had a different viewpoint. “We haven’t had a lot of time to instill a massive difference. I hope that we can inject a little freshness. It can be a little luck. But although, we’ve lost four games, we haven’t been disgraceful. Some of the games have been (lost by) fine margins. Sometimes, a small percentage can make all the difference. There’s no pressure. Hopefully, we can pull in the right direction and get going,” he stated.

He further continued: “Obviously, we had a good relationship with Teddy. Collectively, what we took out of the (players) draft, we were happy with. It’s not the Indian players fault or the foreign players fault. There were many reasons - uncontrollable factors, injuries and the fixture pile-up. You will have to collaborate all the data for reasons, and it can be as simple as a little bad luck. I don’t think anybody’s to blame. Everybody’s pushed in the same direction, everybody’s given it their all and the season is not over. Hopefully, we can push on and get into that top four.”

The 41-year-old will be on the touchline when ATK face Chennaiyin, a side against whom they had bowed to a 2-3 defeat earlier in the season. Speaking of the opponents and the overall mindset in the squad, he replied: “With regards to motivation, they’re (ATK) professional players. We play in a fantastic stadium with great fans. Chennai, obviously, is second in the league. They score a lot of goals, are very strong, have three foreigners in their back four, are a huge threat from set-pieces and have some great Indian players. We know Jeje’s (Lalpekhlua) capabilities in scoring goals. It’ll be a good challenge. I’m sure the players will respond.”

Before ending the media session, he also shared what according to him went wrong with the two-time champions this season. “An unfortunate amount of away games and we had some injuries. There was a loss of confidence with one or two players, as the results didn’t come and we’ve had very small margins. Statistically, we’ve done well in the games. Apart from the Pune games, it’s been very tight,” he concluded.