ISL 2017-18: Hope my creative players are at their best: Coppell

THE FIGHT for getting to the playoffs is on and tonight’s winner between Jamshedpur FC and Mumbai City FC will enter the top four, at least temporarily.

Steve Coppell, coach of Jamshedpur FC spoke to the press ahead yesterday of the match.  He shared,

“We had a great game just three weeks ago; 2-2 in Jamshedpur,” he stated. “It was a really good game. Both sides wanted to win the game. The same will be true tomorrow. You win games by scoring goals. Mumbai will be looking to play the same way, whatever the circumstances. They will be looking to score goals; the creation up front, and similarly we will look to deal with what Mumbai have to offer and hopefully, (we will) come through ourselves and create problems.”

Coppell continued,

 “At the moment, our intentions are to go out and try and take the three points,” the 62-year-old revealed. “Maybe, during the course of the game, there might be occasions where we say things are going right, things are not going right, let’s protect what we got. But certainly, at the moment, our intentions are to come here and be as open and attacking as we can be to win the game.”

Speaking on the season so far, Coppell threw light on the performance overall,

“Our season has been fairly constant all the time,” Coppell inferred. “We started off the season with a lot of clean sheets and not many goals, and now we are scoring more goals but struggling to find clean sheets. And for me, personally, I’d prefer having a clean sheet. All coaches take satisfaction out of getting clean sheets. For any game, that is our priority. Scoring goals is more of individual creations. So, I hope my creative players are at their best tomorrow because they will need to be. Mumbai are a good side; they are very, very resilient. To come back and beat Goa was an outstanding performance.”

Providing an injury update on his team, The Englishman said  it was all good news for him,

“We have a few knocks but nothing that will stop anyone from playing tomorrow’s match. Everybody in the squad is training, so no problems,” he concluded.

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