Sleepless in Aizawl: East Bengal coach fuels controversy with evasive answers about Robert being dropped

THERE'S A NEW MYSTERY that's plaguing the East Bengal dressing room. 

Apart from the sudden drop in form which saw the league leaders pick up only 2 points from the last 3 matches and lose their previous match to Aizawl FC, the latest thing that the club's management had to worry about before the last match... whether or not their players were getting enough sleep.

At the heart of this controversy lies Robert Lalthlamuana, the East Bengal left back who has often dawned the captain's armband for the Red and Golds. He is from Aizawl, so everyone assumed that he would start for East Bengal against Aizawl FC on Monday. But when the team list came out, it turned out that head coach Trevor Morgan had opted for Narayan Das on the left back position and not Robert. The decision surprised almost everyone.

So after the game when Morgan was asked why Robert was dropped, he gave an answer that surprised everyone even more. He said,

"Robert did not sleep last night. That's why he wasn't in the team."

But why would a veteran player like Robert neglect his sleep before an important match? Morgan answered the journalists,

"I won't comment on that. You find out why he didn't sleep."

The whole thing sounds a bit shady; at once it reminds of the disciplinary issues that another East Bengal player, Abinash Ruidas, got into in Goa and the strict way Morgan dealt with that. But what happened here? When the representative of Bengali newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika tried to find out, he was told by East Bengal's team manager Manish Bandyopadhyay,

"Robert had caught a cold, that's why he couldn't sleep all night."

Robert himself seemed to echo the manager's comment,

"I was feverish last night, hence could not sleep."

But if the reason he could not sleep was because he was sick, why wouldn't Morgan say that up front? There's absolutely no reason to be deliberately evasive about a non-controversial thing like that. This is what has raised some red flags; there seems to be more to this than the team is publicly admitting.

Either way, East Bengal are traveling to Bangalore to take on defending champions Bengaluru FC in a game that will see both the teams fight their hardest to return to winning ways. It will be interesting to see if Robert makes the trip; at a time when players like Rahul Bheke and Willis Plaza are out injured, Morgan can't afford to leave out any more players in big matches.

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