Bengaluru FC head coach Simon Grayson was proud of the efforts shown by his players and said that they tried everything in their capacity to win the game, as his side went down 0-1 to Odisha FC in the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) at the Kalinga Stadium, in Bhubaneswar, on Thursday.

Grayson stated that it hasn’t been easy for his side to come up with an instant fix such as changing their playing style given the injury concerns his side has been going through. However, the Englishman is hopeful that his side will come back better, stronger, and fitter after their two-week break and believes that will create more attacking options.

The Blues’ head coach addressed the media after the match in the official post-match press conference.

Here are the excerpts from his press conference:

What are your thoughts on tonight’s loss against Odisha FC?
In the second half, we totally came to their half without creating too many real good opportunities and that comes down to probably the personnel. What summed it up tonight is that I was hoping to put a centre back in (the game) as the centre forward to try to get something out of the game. We've got seven attacking players out injured at the moment. If you’ve got the likes of Javi (Hernandez) unavailable, Prince (Ibarra), Udanta (Singh), Harman (Preet Singh), Faisal Ali. It is going to make a difference for me to try to change the team and find a different way of winning the game later on, and so that hasn’t been ideal for us.

I thought the players gave everything that they could, with the match going right to the very end. In addition, on another day, we might have got something out again, it could have been a 0-0 or it could have been a 1-1. So, (I’m) really proud of the young team that we've got out there. We are still a young team and learning. Nevertheless, hopefully we'll get players back better and stronger. For the Bengal (East Bengal FC) game, which is nearly two weeks away, the break will come out as a good time for us to hope to have a few more attacking options available. We changed our system tonight, we went out as a 4-4-2 to try to create more chances, create more crosses, and I thought we did that.

Considering the injuries, are there any changes that you have already thought of?

We don't have a game for nearly two weeks now. So it's come at a good time that we can hopefully have a few players back. However, Javi’s missing tonight because his wife had a young girl, so congratulations to them. But it's not ideal because I’d loved for him to be on the pitch. Moreover, we changed things around by playing Leon (Augustine) on the right hand side and Roshan (Naroem) further up. So hopefully, by the next game, we'll have more players available for fitness. The more attacking options we have, the more I can change. I'm putting on full-backs and centre-backs to try to get something out of the game when really you need to be putting on exciting wingers in the system that we played tonight.

You get a big break before you play your next game. So how do you plan to use this time?

A bit of a mixture of a few days of rest and recovery, lots of hard work on the training pitch, and hopefully by the time the next game comes along, we'll have more players back from fitness and available. Talking about all the players that I have not mentioned here, Prabir, he’s another attacking full-back that we can bring into the team. So, we've got seven or eight players, and that can harm you, certainly young boys on the bench. Tonight was never been around the first team. And then two new fullbacks, a new right-winger.

However, I’m proud of my team. I thought they worked extremely hard and conceded a good goal against a strong Odisha FC team that have had some fantastic results so far this season.