Jamshedpur FC travel to the Mumbai Football Arena in the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2017-18 to take on Mumbai City FC on Thursday. The league debutants arrive after a tough away fixture against defending champions ATK which ended on a happy note considering their 1-0 win. They will look to repeat this result in what is expected to be another challenging encounter far from home with an aim to break into the top four of the standings.

Prior to the match, Jamshedpur’s head coach Steve Coppell spoke to the media and started by mentioning that he expects a competitive match at Mumbai, one which his team will have to be wary of.

“We had a great game just three weeks ago; 2-2 in Jamshedpur,” he stated. “It was a really good game. Both sides wanted to win the game. The same will be true tomorrow. You win games by scoring goals. Mumbai will be looking to play the same way, whatever the circumstances. They will be looking to score goals; the creation up front, and similarly we will look to deal with what Mumbai have to offer and hopefully, (we will) come through ourselves and create problems.”

He also explained the objectives for his team for the upcoming fixture

“At the moment, our intentions are to go out and try and take the three points,” the 62-year-old revealed. “Maybe, during the course of the game, there might be occasions where we say things are going right, things are not going right, let’s protect what we got. But certainly, at the moment, our intentions are to come here and be as open and attacking as we can be to win the game.”

The former Manchester United winger went on to highlight the importance of maintaining clean sheets in a game, while hoping that his team’s attackers were up to their tasks as well.

“Our season has been fairly constant all the time,” Coppell inferred. “We started off the season with a lot of clean sheets and not many goals, and now we are scoring more goals but struggling to find clean sheets. And for me, personally, I’d prefer having a clean sheet. All coaches take satisfaction out of getting clean sheets. For any game, that is our priority. Scoring goals is more of individual creations. So, I hope my creative players are at their best tomorrow because they will need to be. Mumbai are a good side; they are very, very resilient. To come back and beat Goa was an outstanding performance.”

Before wrapping up, Coppell offered some good news on the injury front.

“We have a few knocks but nothing that will stop anyone from playing tomorrow’s match. Everybody in the squad is training, so no problems,” he concluded.