FC Pune City will be on the road for the third time in this campaign when they take on FC Goa at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Goa on Sunday. The two teams have had contrasting starts to the season, with Goa having claimed seven points from a possible nine and Pune managing just one. Fresh off their 5-0 routing of Mumbai City FC at home, Sergio Lobera's men will look to score another resounding victory over, while Pune will look to put forth a gritty stand and take home three points from the tough fixture.

A day prior to the match, the Goa head coach was present at the pre-match press conference to take questions. He started off by dismissing claims that his side can already be considered favourites to win the title and also stated that Pune will be no pushovers despite their poor run of form. "I sincerely don’t think that we are the favourites. I also believe that if we are not at our 100% we will not be able to win the game tomorrow. I don’t think the table reflects the potential that Pune has as a team. I think they’re a great team and I’m pretty sure they’ll be fighting for the title. I think this game is a tough one,” he said.

When asked about his views on midfielder Hugo Boumos’ eye-catching performances so far, the Spaniard said, “I don’t like to speak about any players at an individual level. What I have to work towards is the collective team, and how the team is functioning as a whole. With regards to Boumous, I think, much like many other players in team, it’s out there for everybody to see how he’s been performing this season."

Goa have scored a whopping ten goals in just three matches this season and when asked to assess his team's attacking prowess, Lobera said, “I think the numbers that we have sort of reflects the attacking ability that we have as a team. What we’ve done so far is an indication of that. But again, a coach always has to improve on things and the defence is something that we’re going to try and improve this year. I think the idea is to keep going and keep doing that.”

Representing Pune at the presser was Pradyum Reddy, who was named the interim coach after the club parted ways with former head coach Miguel Portugal. When asked about how motivated his players were to prove themselves in the face of adversity, Reddy said, “See I think that’s a question for another occasion. At the moment, we’re just focused on the game in hand with very little time to prepare. Our main focus in on that rather than anything else at the moment”

He also spoke about the upcoming challenge of taking on the in-form Gaurs. “It’s always a challenge when you play against FC Goa, especially over the last one and a half seasons. We came here in a similar situation last year when Goa had to win or pick up a point to top of the table. And they were in a free-flowing scoring form. So, it’s a similar challenge as last year, when we came here and got the result we needed. We got a clean sheet. Won 2-0. So, we have a similar squad as last year and got a lot of players who have been retained from that season. We feel if we get things fixed in terms of getting back to basics and fix the issues that we have, we can try to grind out a result as we did last year,” he said.

Read the match preview here.