After a setback against Mumbai City FC in their previous encounter, Chennaiyin FC came back strongly with a 2-1 win against Bengaluru FC at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru on Sunday. The Blues succumbed to their first Hero Indian Super League (ISL) home defeat, as Jeje Lalpekhlua’s early strike and Dhanpal Ganesh’s late header cancelled out Sunil Chhetri’s equaliser.

After the high-octane southern derby, the visitors’ head coach John Gregory looked delighted in the post-match press conference and was effusive when asked about their opponents on the night. “We obviously came here to win. We got off to a good start. It certainly helped scoring first. The game was exactly how I expected it to be, Bengaluru are not only a fantastic football team but also a fantastic football club and that made a huge impression on the ISL this season. We’ve obviously seen a lot of them and they play fantastic football. They play it the way I believe it should be played. From the back, from the goalkeeper, they try and build it up and play it to the feet.”

He continued: “Obviously, before tonight, I’ve enjoyed watching them on TV. They are a real pleasure to watch because of the way they play and we obviously knew it was going to be a difficult game for us tonight, but we managed to keep them quiet until the last 6-7 minutes. We defended very well, everyone worked really hard for us and we obviously got the winning goal at a crucial time.”

Handing the Blues their first home defeat of the season will surely give Chennaiyin a lot of confidence going forward, and quite naturally, the Englishman was asked about his tactics after the victory. “I think the boys on my team have good habits. A lot of it is mental as they need to be focused and concentrate and if we concentrate on what we have to do then it gets hard for the opponents, and that sums up our game today. We made it hard for Bengaluru to play the open attacking game they always do. I think defensively we were very strong. I think Ganesh and Bikramjit (Singh) in the central midfield did a good job for us defensively, and of course, (Francisco) Fernandes on one side and Jude (Nworuh) on the other did good jobs and tried to make it as hard as possible for the opposition and keep them away from our goal.”

He further added, “As I’ve said yesterday, Miku sometimes has three shots a game and scores two goals. He’s a really dangerous character. We just tried to keep them out of our penalty box as much as we could. I thought it was heading for one-nil. Once they got the equalizer they had five minutes to play and we got our one chance and made the most of it. It was a derby game and many of our fans made their way from Chennai to support us. We had a bad result in Mumbai and so the result tonight was fair to the travelling fans who came out to support. I think all in all we are really happy to get the three points.”

Inigo Calderon again put up a brilliant display for the visitors at the back, while assisting them up front as well. Gregory definitely had some wonderful words to say about his ace defender. “He is a danger to the opposition. He has definitely helped us to win matches this season. Inigo is a very experienced player and has been outstanding for us this season. Trying to keep Miku quiet as well was a tough job. (Edu) Garcia, too. But he stopped a lot of their attacks. It was a good solid performance from us and definitely Calderon,” he concluded.