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A 10-men Mumbai City FC held ISL table-toppers Bengaluru FC as the game ended in a 1-1 draw.
Udanta Singh's header opened the scoring for Carles Cuadrat's side with Modou Sougou scoring the equaliser for the away team with his 5th goal of the season.
The match between the two in-form teams involved 28 fouls in the match, six of them resulting in a yellow card with two of them shown to the same player.
Barely seven minutes into the second half, Sehnaj Singh, already cautioned by the referee, lunged into a senseless tackle fouling Dimas and got sent off leaving his side with only 10 players.
After the draw, both the sides ended in the top two positions in the league table with Jorge Costa's men leapfrogging Northeast United FC into the second place.
Let's look at the five talking points from the match.
#5 Amrinder Singh: First choice for the national team?
Gurpreet Singh Sandhu is a great goalkeeper with excellent distribution abilities, but is often find as the guilty party when his team concedes a goal. On the other hand, Amrinder Singh commands his box well, has an assured catching ability and can take goal kicks with both his feet, as seen in the match today.
The 25-year old made many saves including a Chhetri shot at the near post seconds before the half time break.
At the start of the second half, Chhetri again got in close as his curling shot was saved by a diving Amrinder, producing one of the best saves of the season.
Xisco's powerful shot was also fended away by the Mumbai City skipper keeping his side in the game with just 15 minutes to go on the clock.
The Bengaluru FC goalkeeper has 26 caps for the national team while his Mumbai City FC counterpart has only two caps to his name. Time for a change?
#4 Sehnaj Singh's discipline gone?
Sehnaj Singh has been an everpresent in the Mumbai City FC midfield this season after missing the first match against Jamshedpur FC.
He has been the lynchpin in the midfield as he does the dirty work of destroying the opposition attacks allowing the likes of Paulo Machado, Arnold Issoko and Rafael Bastos to go forward and support Sougou score important goals.
Though, against Bengaluru FC, Singh collected a yellow card in the 8th minute, his fourth of the season seeing him suspended for the next match.
Apparently, Sehnaj Singh wasn't happy with being suspended for just one match, as he fouled Dimas in the 52nd minute and got sent off leaving his side with just 10 men.
#3 Rahul Bheke- versatile much?
Rahul Bheke has played at right back, centre back and left back as well in this season showing his versatility and proving to be a real utility player.
Nicknamed 'Bhekenbauer' by fans, the 28-year old looks much more assured in the centre of defense but did a good job at left back against Mumbai City FC.
He collected his first yellow card for the season which showed that he was a bit uncomfortable playing at left back compared to centre back.
His cross which provided Udanta Singh's goal was absolute peach and a left winger would have been proud of that cross.
#2 Bengaluru FC missing Miku?
Bengaluru FC has gone unbeaten this season winning seven of their 10 matches and still lie at the top of the table. But, their goalscoring exploits have gone down since Miku has had an ankle surgery.
Without a clinical No.9, Bengaluru's goals per game have gone down from 2 (10 goals in the first five games this season) to 1.4 (seven goals in five games since then).
Also, in the first five games, the league leaders had 22 shots on target from total 57 shots, getting almost 40% shots on target.
Since Miku has been ruled out, Men in Blue have got 25 shots on target from total 85 shots getting less than 30% shots on target.
Apart from the statistics, Bengaluru have struggled in general play, looking lost without a big target man as they have tried Chhetri, Dimas and Chencho as the false 9 without finding any permanent solution.
#1 Mumbai forwards threatened Bengaluru FC defence even with 10 men
The Islanders had just four points after four matches this season and since then, have collected 17 points in seven matches.
Many of these points can be attributed to Mumbai's energetic forwards who bomb forward with full pace and intensity.
Arnold Issoko was declared the 'Hero of the match' for his fantastic performance in which he created 3 major chances in the first half, one of which was converted by Sougou.
When, the away side went down to 10 men, it was expected that they would drop back and defend with all their might but Costa's men surprised us with some interesting attacks threatening the Bengaluru defense.
Sougou now has five goals and Issoko has four assists in this season with Rafael Bastos, Paulo Machado and Raynier Fernandes supporting them ably to create more and more chances.
