Defending champions ATK are currently enduring their worst start to any Hero Indian Super League (ISL) season, with no victory to their name in the four matches they have played. On Sunday, they travel to the Mumbai Football Arena to meet a confident Mumbai City FC and will look to register their first win to get their title defence on track.

Present at the pre-match conference was ATK’s head coach, Teddy Sheringham who was asked how pressurized the team was to perform and secure a victory. “I think if you look closely, we caused our own problems in the previous games. This is something which we have to rectify and this is something which we have to improve on. We have worked hard on that this week and the previous week,” he said. “The management above me has been very supportive. They have seen the way we have attacked games. The confidence is not short in any manner. We have just been conceding silly goals. You just have to work harder and make sure that doesn’t happen,” he added.

On being asked which aspect of the team he is more concerned about and disappointed with, he said, “It’s a tough one. We defended the same and we have attacked the same. When you have drawn and lost two games, you are obviously going to be looking at the defensive aspects of things. I don’t blame anyone. We defend as a team and we attack as a team. We need to be better in all departments and that is something which we are working on.”

ATK has enjoyed a 10-day break before Sunday’s encounter and will be looking to use it to regroup and come back strongly against a team, whom the Englishman considers to be “very strong” and “have a lot of qualities going forward as they are very organised.” He also stressed that his team needs to “look out for their (Mumbai) qualities” to restrain them from scoring.

The new signing of Ryan Taylor, in the place of Carl Baker who is out with an injury has recently grabbed headlines. Speaking on the new squad member, Sheringham said, “He is a similar player to Carl Baker. We missed him a lot in the first few games along with Robbie (Keane). Ryan is a similar player. He plays wide right. He has got good delivery and he has got experience, so he should be a very good signing for us.”

The 51-year-old concluded by highlighting how the mindset of the team is at present and what needs to be done going forward. He shared “My job is to pick people up. When you look at our last few games, we had drawn 0-0 in a very tough game against Jamshedpur. We took the game to them. We could quite easily have won in our last game. So, it is just about tightening up in our weak areas and being a bit more prolific going forward.”