Kerala Blasters FC registered a thumping 4-1 win in their Hero Indian Super League Season 2 encounter against NorthEast United FC at the Indira Gandhi Stadium in Guwahati on Sunday evening. Chris Dagnall scored a brace while Cavin Lobo and Antonio German hit the back of the net once each. For the second time this season the Blasters got the better of the Highlanders. With the win, they moved up to seventh but head coach Terry Phelan wasn’t overjoyed and speaking at the post-match conference stressed that his team needed more such wins.

“What’s important are the three points. We don’t think about ‘double’ or anything like that. We just knew the importance of the game with regard to what it does to our season which is I won’t say we are on course but it keeps us in the frame for a top-4 spot. Whereas a loss or a draw today could have finished the season for us,” Phelan told reporters.

“For the players to put in this sort of performance, knowing that we have to win a game. This is the best performance from the team we have seen for a very long time. The effort from the goalkeeper, all the 11 players on the pitch showed great attitude. They passed the ball well, created a lot of opportunities and defended well when we had to,” he added.

On his team's fluent and attractive style of play in the last few matches, Phelan said: “If one watches the replays of the previous matches, one can see that the movement around the ball was quality. We’ve worked around it in training, on movement from midfield and everything worked well today. Obviously, we conceded a goal in the last minutes but take nothing away from the players.

“We’ve been threatening in the last few games and today we played without fear. NorthEast were coming on the back of a couple of good wins, they were playing in their own backyard. We knocked the ball about like the way we should...We played like we should play the game. We showed that we can go forward now and maybe perform well in the next game and see how it goes. We are taking it one game at a time. We still have a lot of work to do. By no means it is finished for us.”

Phelan also revealed his strategy against a NorthEast defence that had done very well in the last couple of matches. “We have worked hard in training. We tried to move the ball quickly in the midfield areas from one side to the other side, tried diagonal balls and playing balls through the middle. We knew their defense was slow in certain areas of the park and our strategy was ‘can we get out early and quickly and keep the ball and tie the midfield up?’ I think we played really well in midfield, we played a diamond. The midfield was excellent today, absolutely excellent. The players played really well today,” he said.