ISL 2022-23: It’s taken 14 months to see these kind of performances: Mumbai City FC’s Des Buckingham

Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham has opined it’s taken 14 months to come up with consistent performances. The Islanders are currently enjoying a good run of form in the Hero ISL and the Englishman has played a key role.

Mumbai City FC bested FC Goa by 4-1 at the Mumbai Football Arena on Thursday to register their sixth win of the season. The club is currently at the top of the standings with six wins and three drawn matches and they are still unbeaten in the ongoing ninth season

Pereyra Diaz scored a brace for the home team while strikes from Lallianzuala Chhangte and Alberto Noguera also scored for Mumbai City FC against the Gaurs to continue the consistent run.

Buckingham said a lot of work has been put in by the players behind the scenes and gave credit to the players for grabbing their chances.

Sharing his thoughts in the post-match press conference, Buckingham said, “I am happy with the staff, but that’s all it is. We’re nine games into a 20 game season. We want more than 20 and we’ve got a lot more work to do. I wasn’t happy with the first half. I thought we were good enough to have the goals and go in with the win, but I wasn’t happy with a couple of things which we changed in the second half, but we are very happy overall with nine games. You know what we’ve been able to do in terms of performances that have got results as well. It’s not just been the results. I think they’ve been deserved and the way we’ve played has been very good, but there is a lot more that you need to do if we want to continue, not just getting better game by game, but we’ve got a way we want to do things and I think it’s a lot of work, both the staff and the players can look to do and we’ll look to address that after the short little break that we get before East Bengal FC.”

Buckingham didn’t share what he told his team at the halftime break but revealed he was delighted they were able to score twice soon after the interval.

He said, “I won’t share what I told them at halftime, but I would have liked to have told them that a little bit sooner if the moment would have allowed me to do. From the games that we watched and the stats that we have and all the things we have access to, we know that FC Goa start very well in the first 15 minutes, especially, any of the eight games the way that they press, the way that they create challenges and the way they try and score in the first 15 minutes. It’s been very evident since the start of the season. So we were wary of that and I think that was what we saw this evening. We got exactly what we expected. We got to half time with the lead fortunately, and we got caught out of position where although we hadn’t played maybe the way that we would have wanted too often, we still got in with the goal advantage of 2-1.”

He concluded, “The message to the players at half-time was that we changed two things, one with the ball and one without and I won’t share that because again we may need to use it again at some point in the season but we are very pleased with how we came out in the second half. We started very well. The third goal came from one of the things we’ve spoken about in the half time team talk and then,you know i am very happy with how we then managed the game both in terms of playing and also the players then came on to firstly contribute to the performance and secondly they get some more minutes into their legs.”

Mumbai City FC will next take on East Bengal FC on 16th December at Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, Kolkata.