Reigning Hero Indian Super League (ISL) champions Chennaiyin FC have found it difficult to defend their title this season having failed to win any of their opening four fixtures of the 2018-19 campaign. Their search for a first win of the season now takes them to Kolkata to face ATK at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan Stadium on Friday.

ATK have also had a rough start to the season but seem to be improving with each game. After losing their opening two matches, Friday’s hosts found some sort of rhythm in their last two games, picking up four points from a possible six. Ahead of the fixture against Chennai, their head coach Steve Coppell seemed hopeful about his side’s chances against the southerners. “It was obviously a sloppy start, and the first game, 2-0, wasn’t a good match for us. In the game against Delhi, I thought we played very well. We had to work hard. But I hope now we can look forward to the next couple of games with optimism and really look to try and play well and look to put ourselves in a good position,” he told reporters at the pre-match press conference.

Coppell insisted that even though his team are a work in progress, they aren’t that far away from the elite either. “I think in this early stage of the season there will be a lot of teams who are at a certain level. Teams seem to be beating each other fairly regularly and a couple of teams seem to be elevating themselves even at this stage. So, we want to be in that elite group and to do that we have to win at home. All good teams do win at home. So, it’s our responsibility to accept that gap and do our very, very best to collect points at our home ground in front of our home fans,” the Englishman said.

Voicing his opinion on the lack of home wins this term, Coppell asserted that it may have something to do with the stadium rather than the performance itself. “I think there is a pattern. I’m not sure whether I can identify it, possibly because the grounds are so distant with running tracks and things like that. I really don’t know. But if you look at the statistics over the last few years, there are not many teams who have a dominant home record. To be a dominant team I think you have to have a dominant home record. So, we aspire to be in that group. So, we obviously have to improve on where we are now and hopefully take it forward and have a strong home record,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chennaiyin’s assistant coach Sabir Pasha told the media that he felt his team are playing well, but the results need to improve. “We are doing good. You can see from the performance. We are getting better. ATK are the two-time champions. ATK is always strong, especially in the last two matches. They become stronger with form. We know ATK is a very good team,” he said before going on to add. “So, I think they are a good side. We are serious about them. Everybody is fit, and everybody is available. It’s not easy to win. We have been playing good. Unfortunately, the results haven’t been great, but that doesn’t take anything away from the performance of the boys.”

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