FC Pune City may not be in semi-final contention anymore but head coach David Platt has insisted they will do their best to win their last match of the 2015 Hero Indian Super League against Chennaiyin FC at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium in Pune on Saturday.

If Pune beat Chennai, NorthEast United FC will be through to the next stage. However, the Super Machans can advance to the semis even with a draw as they enjoy a much better goal difference than the Highlanders.

Ahead of the game, Platt said Pune will go into the match with a professional approach. “Professionally. That is the only way to do this. The backdrop of this is that there’s nothing for us from this game, in the sense that we cannot qualify for the top 4. We are preparing for this game like we did before, with extreme professionalism. We’ve had just two days and not much rest. Our fate may have been sealed after the last game but I think we have to go out and do our best to win because that’s what we deserve and that’s what everyone, including the fans, deserve. We have to pay the league respect but more than that we have to do this for ourselves.”

Pune, who won three out of their first four games, haven’t won once in their last seven games. When asked how that felt, Platt said: “…Unfortunately our bad run lasted much longer than that of other teams and when you don’t win once in seven games, you don’t qualify because that’s half your games in the league stage.

“It’s difficult to describe, since the games come thick and fast. You plan for the one game and then the next one is around the corner and you don’t get the time to sit down and think about what went wrong because giving it five mins isn’t enough. It needs a lot of brutal honesty.

“It would be remiss of me to give reasons here and now. It needs a lot more thinking and analysis. I need to go back and think about what I did right and what could have been different from day one. Day one is when I walked into the club, much before pre-season. For the club to move forward and learn from this experience, you have to sit down and think what went wrong and analyze that and balance it with what went right. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

Platt, however, refused to blame his rotation policy for the team’s poor run in the second half of the league stage. “No. Not at all. You can’t level that at us. When we were winning games, people were turning to us and saying it was due to our rotation policy but now that we have not, you are turning and saying it is due to the rotation policy. Apart from the first few games, there wasn’t much rotation. I think the other managers did it too because that is what this league demands. Even in our last six games, we did not go out and make wholesome changes, we only made changes that were required.”

When asked how his coaching experience in the league had been, Platt said: “I’ve had a very positive learning experience. I didn’t know much about the league and the players before I came here. You have ideas in your head about how you want the season to pan out with the six foreigners etc. but you only learn towards the end of the season how these things go.

“As for my experience of India, I have had a great experience. The results could have been better and I was out here to get the results so that’s very disappointing. The low point was not qualifying. It’s not good to not achieve objectives. Our first objective was to qualify for the semi-finals but the primary objective was to win the league.”

When asked which of the Indian players impressed him the most, from his team and the other teams, Platt said: “I’ve seen Eugeneson [Lyngdoh] and worked with him on a daily basis. When you do that, you see all qualities and potential of all players. He’s a bright boy and I think he can do better too.

“If I had to pick another player, it would be Sunil Chhetri. To play in a position where mostly foreigners play is amazing. But it’s not just that, he has sacrificed his position for the sake of the team and he has conducted himself well on and off the pitch.

“In terms of foreigners, they’ve been good but if I had to pick one, I’d see how effective a player has been. You cannot look past Stiven Mendoza. The way he runs at players and gets behind defenders with his speed and give problems to the opposition. The other person I think that has not got the pace but the willingness to work for the team is Ian Hume of Atlético De Kolkata.”

When asked to compare Indian football with the rest of the world, the Englishman said: “Experience improves football. It’s not how much you play but what you take out of games. It’s not experience in the game but also experience in the situation that counts. To perform in a game where it’s your last game in the league and not much to get out of it and be professional is something that you learn in training and playing against foreigners who have faced similar situations in the past. The more you face such situations, the more you face such issues, you become a better footballer. You need football of that high level. Experience comes with time and I know it will come.”