Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham was pleased with his team’s performance as the Islanders got all three points against NorthEast United FC after a 3-1 win in the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) at Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, in Guwahati, on Friday.

The Islanders went top of the Hero ISL table as strikes from Ahmed Jahouh, Bipin Singh, and Jorge Diaz helped them ease past the Highlanders. With another win, Mumbai City continue their unbeaten run this season and lead the count on most goals scored in the league.

0️⃣8️⃣ Games
2️⃣3️⃣ Goals#ICYDK, @MumbaiCityFC have scored the most goals after 8 matches in #HeroISL history! 😱#NEUMCFC #HeroISL #LetsFootball #MumbaiCityFC pic.twitter.com/DrM7sxaE02

— Indian Super League (@IndSuperLeague) November 25, 2022

Buckingham was delighted with the way the visitors found solutions to break down NorthEast United FC and he called for his side to stick to their style of play, despite not being able to keep a clean sheet. The MCFC head coach also backed NorthEast United to change their fortunes even though the hosts slumped to their seventh defeat of the season.  

Here are the excerpts from Buckingham’s post-match press conference:

Another win for the team and your team are on top of the table. What are your thoughts on the game?

As we expected, we knew this game was gonna be difficult for us. Coming here against a team that has played good football and as I’ve said before, they haven’t gotten the results that they deserve in the previous games. They will get a point very soon and we need to make sure that wasn’t us. There are always going to be difficult games. The team, the way it was set up made it difficult for us to play what we wanted, they sat back, and made the spaces compact but what’s pleasing is the way we found ways to break that down. Maybe last year there were times last year when we were not able to do that, but this season we had two-three different ways where we could get through that (defensive) block. To come here, get the three points, and go top of the table, it is very pleasing.

Under you, both your wingers, (Lallianzuala) Chhangte and Bipin have formed a good understanding. What are your thoughts about them(question mark?

Yeah! We’ve also got Vikram (Pratap Singh)as well who fits into this, we have three players for two positions and you know Vikram hasn't played as much football as maybe we would have liked and he would have liked but when you have Bipin(Singh) and Chhangte as well as they are at the moment. It's usually pleasing to see those two. We've made it. We've spent 14 months working with these players as I've talked before, about how we want to play and we went and recruited Chhangte last year because he is a good player. And he certainly suited the way we wanted to play and then Bipin has been here for a long time, and the time that he spent trying to develop his game and his understanding of what we want for his role, especially then and now not only get the ball but get him in the areas that we would like them to get in more often. and then it's up to them to finish off. I'm so happy to see goals and goal scoring contributions from both.

You conceded against NorthEast United FC, a team that hasn’t been scoring goals. What are your thoughts?

I thought we were defensively pretty solid, throughout. We got caught trying to play out but we've got a way that we play and that won't change. We just need to be smart, you know we have young players in our backline and we're going to keep encouraging them to play and to develop, continue to support them in that because that's the only way they're gonna get better and it's a learning for them and it's a learning for us because we need to recognise times when to do it, and obviously times not do it, but we will. We have a very positive and supportive environment in the way that we want to do things and to develop players and develop them properly. We'll stay true to what we do. Now it's about making sure there are learnings from that and it doesn't happen again.