NorthEast United FC will be looking for back-to-back wins in Hero Indian Super League 2016 when they take on Chennaiyin FC at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai on Saturday. The Highlanders enter the contest on the back of a 1-0 win against FC Pune City and currently occupy sixth place in the league standings with 14 points from 11 games, one spot above Chennaiyin.Chennai registered a 1-0 win over the Highlanders earlier in the season and NorthEast head coach Nelo Vingada wants to return the favour on Saturday. “As I always say the next game for me and my team is most important and most difficult. But it is more than that, it’s very crucial for both teams. Even though Chennaiyin have played one more game than us, they still have a chance for the semi-finals. There is a chance for Kerala, Pune, NorthEast and Chennaiyin. Only Mumbai is safe and the other teams are in it. Regarding our last few games, we lost even when out performance was good,” Vingada told reporters at the pre-match press conference.He continued: “But in football only results are important, so tomorrow we will target a result which can put us into a nice position to qualify. It will be hard, it will be difficult but Chennai won in Guwahati and we can win here. Our determination is to win but we respect the defending champions. We are playing better than we did a few weeks back, so I hope we can be the real NorthEast United and face the organisation of Chennaiyin. As I said Chennai won in Guwahati, so we can win here. Chennai also have ambitions and will play well tomorrow.”The victory against the Stallions earlier this week snapped a six-game winless streak to rekindle the Highlanders’ semis hopes. When asked how important the win against Antonio Habas’ men was, Vingada said: “My words are the same today as they were when we played Pune. We have no option other than winning… To be honest, we had better games before and we didn’t get the results. Against Pune we did so-so but we won. In Kolkata, we were much better than Kolkata but we drew. In Goa, we were much better but we missed chances and lost that game in the last minute. Maybe in Pune we were lucky even though we had more second-half corners kicks and chances. I’m focussing to win tomorrow. If we play with concentration, we can win.”The 63-year-old also provided an update on his squad and ruled out a few influential players ahead of tomorrow’s match due to injuries and suspensions. “Tomorrow we have [Rowllin] Borges suspended [due to yellow card accumulation]. And then Gustavo [Lazzaretti] is still recovering. Remaining players have small problems, maybe Nirmal [Chettri] cannot recover but most of the players will be okay to play,” he said.
