Bengaluru FC forward Roy Krishna believes his side are refreshed and focused after their two-week break, and now need to step up as a team to find the solution to winning games, as his team faces off against East Bengal FC in matchweek 6 of the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium, in Bengaluru, on Thursday.

Krishna expressed that the team has no excuses for the poor results in the last few games, and is positive about getting a good result in Friday’s game as the team returns to play in front of the home crowd after a long period.

The attacker addressed the media in the official pre-match press conference ahead of the battle against East Bengal FC.

Here are the excerpts of Krishna’s press conference:

Does the lack of goals vary on your mind as well? Does it add pressure on you?

No pressure. I think, as the coach said, we just need to focus as a team and find the moment to pass and get in the box. This week, there’s a lot of positive energy, and we can see that the boys are really looking forward to playing this Friday. I think as a team we need to step up and start (attacking) from the first minute without waiting for the opponent to score first. It was a tough week of away games, no excuses, but now we're back in front of the fans and we need them to back us up.

You’ve played in the league for a couple of years now but this season onwards there’s a different format for the playoffs. Does that allow a bit of an easier transition period for the teams to gel together and then start performing in the middle and towards the end?

No. I think we need to start from the first game itself, and in the last two games it was very disappointing as we didn’t get the result but we played well. Now, we need to just focus on ourselves and start well. This is a great opportunity after three away games, but yes, we won’t take it easy because it’s top six and that we have a chance. Of course, we have great players in our squad so we need to work hard and get back to winning ways and hopefully, with the coach we have, we trained incredibly hard and we had a positive energy. So, we can carry that into Friday’s game.

How has the team training with Sivasakthi Narayanan been? How do you see his development as a player?

He has great potential. I think he works really hard and he listens, which is one of the key things especially when you’re a young striker and have a lot of energy. When a player like me or Sunil Chhetri talks to him, he listens. He has a bright future ahead, he just needs to be calm, still, and not to focus on social media a lot. He’s a good guy and one of the future stars of Indian football.