We deserved at least a point: Northeast United FC assistant coach Paul Groves
NorthEast United FC assistant coach Groves rued his side's missed chances, but felt they deserved more from the game.
Northeast United FC assistant head coach Paul Groves said his side deserved at least one point against Jamshedpur FC, considering the possession they had in the second half, after going to down by a goal to the defending League Shield winners in the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) at the JRD Tata Sports Complex, in Jamshedpur, on Sunday.
The Red Miners got their lead through captain Peter Hartley and consolidated their lead in the first half, but the Highlanders came up with renewed energy and attacked from all quarters in the second half. Despite having eleven shots in total, the hosts couldn't convert their chances.
The defeat means that Northeast United FC have now lost all four games in Hero ISL 2022-23 so far. NorthEast United FC assistant coach Groves rued his side's missed chances, but felt they deserved more from the game.
Here are the excerpts from Paul Groves's post-match press conference:
This is your fourth loss of the season, what are your thoughts?
When we look at today's performance, it was a game of two halves. Jamshedpur FC played their best performance in the first half, but in the second half, we were the better team. we imposed more threats and created more opportunities to score goals but unfortunately, we were not able to take those chances and that's why we ended up on the wrong side of the result, but we think that we didn't deserve this loss. We could have come away with a point at least.
In the last ten minutes of the game, your team attacked a lot but couldn't finish them off...
Yes, we didn't finish off those attacks. In fact, not only in the last ten minutes but for the last half an hour we we,re on top and dominated the game, when we had that amount of possession we must have finished those opportunities but couldn't do that. That's the moment we had fallen. We did the effort, work rate, commitment, and organisation despite having some limitations like height disadvantage during set-pieces and we were dealing with it quite well until they scored the goal using height advantage.
As the head coach (Marco Balbul) got the red card, he won't be there for the next match, how difficult is it for the team?
The work is done throughout the week about that match day and different scenarios of what may or may not happen, and make sure that we prepare the best possible way, we can. Obviously, there will be a new situation which will arise during the game and we must react to it, and with the experience on the bench we will able to deal with it.