Hyderabad FC head coach Manuel Marquez has expressed that the match with SC East Bengal on Thursday at Athletic Stadium will not be an easy one despite the latter sitting at the bottom of the table.

Hyderabad have remained unbeaten in their previous five encounters while SC East Bengal are yet to register their first win in the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2021-22 season.

Ahead of Hyderabad FC’s clash against SC East Bengal, the head coach addressed the media during a pre-match press conference.

Here are the excerpts of Marquez’s press conference:

SC East Bengal are currently languishing at the bottom of the table. Do you feel it is the right time to post a win and consolidate the position in the top four in the points table?

I think that all of us coaches will agree that every game is very difficult to win, even for example, yesterday we saw that when ATK Mohun Bagan was winning 3-1, in the 83rd minute, all of us thought, ‘Okay, the game is finished’ but Northeast scored the second goal and until the end they had possibilities to equalize the game.

I think that the day before Bengaluru, that now is second from the bottom, equalized with Jamshedpur. I think that all the coaches say the same thing that every team can beat the other and it is another game. We will try to win, but we don't think that if East Bengal is now in the last position or not. We have to play with our style and try to win the game.

Taking on the bottom place team in East Bengal, is there a psychological advantage for the team, for the players, especially?

No, you have to play against each team. It's true that they are not the best at the moment. But it's true that if you look at three points from three draws, these are against Jamshedpur, Chennai, and Kerala.Then even against Goa, they lost 4-3. And they have a lot of chances to win the game, or to lose. We know that now the situation is difficult for them. But we have to be focused 100% in our game and in our style. Don't think if it's easy or not, because for sure it won't be easy.

Are you happy with the 1-1 result with FC Goa in the last game? What Hyderabad FC could have done differently to get maybe three points from that game?

No, I don't. I'm not happy because when you play one game, you always try to get the three points and that is better than a draw and a loss. And I said before that it was a fair score because they started the game better. For me, the strange situation is that Goa is four points behind us. This is the strength situation for me. Then for me 1-1 in the beginning is a good score. Better, of course, that we try to win every game.

Unbeaten after the first game of the season and are you happy with the consistency that the team has shown so far?

I am happier than in the beginning when I told them that we were looking for consistency and more or less now we have, but about if we deserve more points or not? I don't like to speak about this because you only remember the games that you deserved more points from. For example, the first game against Chennai. We deserve more but for example, the game that we won against Bengaluru for me, if they equalized the game things would be different. It was normal in this case, but sometimes you win games that you don't deserve. And sometimes you lose games and you don't deserve it. During 20 games, I think that this is common.