Defeat was self-inflicted, says Coyle

Chennaiyin FC slumped to a disappointing 2-0 loss against Odisha FC at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Monday. Owen Coyle’s men conceded both goals in the first half after Nerijus Valskis had earlier missed a penalty. The loss keeps the two-time champion second from bottom and with a mountain to climb in order to reach the Indian Super League 2019-20 semi-finals.

At the post-match press conference, Chennaiyin head coach Owen Coyle admitted that the loss was indeed a setback and said, “I think it was a setback. But it was self-inflicted. At 0-0, we had a penalty, a perfect opportunity to go in front. If we go in front, I’m convinced we would have gone on to win the game. But we missed a wonderful opportunity.”

“We don’t want to sit here and make excuses because Odisha have scored two goals. Their second goal was a wonderful goal from outside the box. It was a good move from Odisha. Sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition. We are always fair in our analysis. But in the second half, there was only one team in it, and it was Chennaiyin. Odisha had absolutely no chance in the second half. So, second half there was a lot of positives. I’m here in the job because the team had a really slow start. So, we are playing catchup. But we’ve shown enough that we can win games. What we have to do is to eradicate individual mistakes, which we made tonight,” added the 53-year-old.

Despite the loss, Coyle refused to rule his team out of the top four race just yet and declared,

“We still have enough games and points to win. We have a game in hand. We need to find rhythm, find momentum. When we do that, we can start to pick up points. So, there is still a lot of points to play for. We have to make sure that we cut out the mistakes and we are a little more clinical at the top end of the pitch. If we do that, we can go and win games.”

Lastly, the Marina Machans boss opined that his team still has a lot to learn in terms of game management. “I think the game was quite even. There’s a lot of things in terms of game management and understanding that we need to get better at. Similar to the Goa game, we gave ourselves a lot to do at half-time. Second half, we were outstanding. So, what we have to do is to make sure that we are not giving good teams goals at the start,” he observed.