Kerala Blasters FC assistant coach Trevor Morgan was in a jubilant mood post his side’s nail biting 1-0 victory over FC Pune City at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi. While Morgan was happy that the win helped the hosts to qualify for the semi-finals, he was overall disappointed by his team’s performance and said that they were lucky to win the game as Pune were the better team on the day. “We need luck in football, and we got our season’s worth of luck tonight, without a doubt. Pune can count themselves very unfortunate not to have progressed to the next round. They had some good opportunities but our goalkeeper made some good saves and there was some fantastic defending from our point of view with people throwing their bodies to block shots,” the England-born coach said. “I am really pleased with Humey’s (Iain Hume) free kick as we were practising them in training yesterday and he has come here and scored. Pune couldn’t have done any more during the game besides score,” he added. The former Bolton Wanderers forward believed that his team didn’t start the game very well as Pune put them under a lot of pressure by playing long balls and also pressed very high up. Morgan thought that the decision making of his players was not up to scratch, which prevented them from playing up to their usual standards. “We were giving the ball away a lot, and they kept pushing up the park, they were winning all the second balls; we didn’t really start the game well, but I think we started the second half better. There was a real fire to win the game and it was a real battle to keep that clean sheet today,” he exclaimed. Morgan dismissed the notion that the below par performance of his team was due to nerves. “Nobody was nervous, all our lads have played in big games before; we were just poor in the selection of our passes and poor in our decision making,” he claimed. The coach was all smiles when asked about his team’s mood following the win. “The players are very happy right now, they are celebrating in the dressing room, but to say that they are very happy would be an understatement,” he concluded.
