Kerala Blasters FC head coach Ivan Vukomanovic feels that his side is far from prepared ahead of their crucial tie against Bengaluru FC in matchday 76 of the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2021-22 season at the Tilak Maidan Stadium in Vasco, Goa on Sunday evening.

The Blasters are now at the third place with 20 points from 11 points, with two games in hand, while the Blues are at the seventh spot with 17 points from 13 games.

Vukomanovic addressed the press conference ahead of the upcoming game.

Here are the excerpts from the press conference:

Now that the team has gotten back to training, do you feel it is just enough to reboot and to get back into the initial group form mentality that the team had developed?

So from a professional side, yes. We're going to try to fix our group so that we have enough players. I don't know how many players we need to have. I think 14, 15. I don't know. We'll try to figure out. If we speak about physical shape, mental shape, no. I think that we are also now like most of the players and people in this competition.

So of course, we're going to try to do our best because we are professionals. We are humans also. So, we'll see. And today we have to see in the training session also, how many available players we have, if we can go and play a football game, or like I said, we're going to have enough players for cover.

Do you think that your team is taking the field with only 50% of preparations, both mentally and physically?

So from that park and then we're playing against one team, we know each other, you know this competition. So, you know, we don't care about the game tomorrow. Really. Like we're going to go from the professional side, go and play the game. That's it. So if you speak about serious preparation, if you speak about how things are like going up and the serious competition. You know, we didn't have time to do that.

Bengaluru FC are unbeaten in the last seven games, what are your thoughts about them ahead of the game?

We are not prepared. So Bengaluru is a great team. They have a great coach. They have great momentum as well. I think that they have the team who deserves to be in the top four. And I think at the end of this season, they will be in the top four. So they have very experienced and good players.

They have national team players. It's a good team. The challenge. Yeah. If we are in a normal shape and everything, of course it would be a challenge tomorrow in these circumstances.

Kerala Blasters FC player Harmanjot Singh Khabra also addressed the press conference ahead of the upcoming game:

Due to the COVID situation, there has now been a certain gap between the last match and the upcoming match because of some unavoidable issues. So how are the players feeling right now? Other players are able to start things off what's left last time, or is it a bit like a new start now?

I don't know how, from where to start actually, even I joined two days back. The thing is, you know, it was not certain. I agree that we were not ready for this unavoidable kind of stuff can happen. Like, uh, so we were not expecting at all, like that many players are going to be effective that this worked out.

We have to go through it and I think we have to just, as a player in the dressing room, might have to. I only can ask the players just to be like a professional, they have to deal with it, otherwise we can't go through a situation like this.