Pune: Pune FC will be out to extend their winning run when they take on bottom-placed Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore in a home I-League Round 8 encounter on Sunday.
A dominating win in their last round and the fact that HAL have lost four games on the trot gives Pune FC the pre-match edge, but Coach Derrick Pereira opines differently. “Nothing comes easy… one has to work hard for everything and thus it will be fight to earn success,” he explained.
Pune FC (8 points) is currently ranked joint 9th in the league table and the coach expects his players to pick up from where they left off. “We need to take the same attitude out on the field to get the maximum,” the coach explains, referring to the last game.
While the coach speaks of taking the positives ahead, he does make a note that the opponent team is a “young squad.”
In fact, the one thing that Pune FC will have in mind, advantage apart, is to get even with HAL at the Balewadi Sports Complex. The last time both teams met, Pune FC went down by a solitary goal.
“The past does not matter. Let’s not dwell into that. Every match is different. We got our revenge when we played them in Bangalore,” explains the coach, who believes that the side this time has new players in their midst and will be eager to shred their losing streak.
Ahead of Sunday’s clash, Pune FC will have to deal with playing without striker Jeje Lalpekhlua and midfielder Baldeep Singh as both are away doing national duty in the SAFF Championship at New Delhi. Likewise, attacking medio Douhou Pierrie sits out owing to a double booking, which leaves Pune FC without their regular central midfielders.
The absence of three key players in the Pune FC line up would mean picking Subash Singh or Arata Izumi as an option upfront, while in the midfield the pick could be from either J Prasad, Paresh Shivalkar D Ganesan with Arata providing an option for both positions.
“All are capable of filling in. we will take a call on this on the eve of the match,” informed the coach, who added “all the rest are fit with a some with having niggles that is not much of a bother.”
Both teams have met 5 times before and HAL have somehow turned out to be a ‘bogey team’ in the past for Pune FC until the Bangalore victory last year ended their own three match loss in all time head to head encounters.
With the Pune FC coach warning against complacency the one statistic that the hosts want to exploit is HAL have only drawn one out of 10 League and Fed Cup games played and have lost nine.
“We need to focus and get out and play with determination,” explains the coach.