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Mumbai City FC suffered a morale-dampening 3-2 defeat against Jamshedpur FC in their last game. They next face bottom-placed SC East Bengal, and the Islanders will be expected to walk away with a victory.
But ahead of the game, head coach Des Buckingham has warned that Mumbai City FC could not turn their attention away from the clash against the Red & Gold brigade. ISL Teams have shown on multiple occasions this season that league standings fly out of the window when the kick-off whistle blows.
In response to a Sportskeeda query, the MCFC gaffer said:
"We've seen teams, regardless of their league position, right now are able to beat anyone. We saw that the other night with NorthEast United FC. We can't turn our attention away from making sure that we perform to the top of our ability.
"We have played SC East Bengal already and, for me, we dropped two points. We should have come away with three. We know how important this game is not just in the context of where we are in the league, but making sure we put ourselves in the position that we want to come the end of the game."
The detailed ISL fixtures are available here.
"I explained and apologized to Vinit Rai" - Mumbai City FC boss Des Buckingham on his decision to sub off the midfielder against Jamshedpur FC
Mumbai City FC dropped to fifth in the ISL points table after losing to Jamshedpur and currently have 25 points from 16 games.
Des Buckingham's men conceded two goals within 30 minutes of the first half. Although they rallied back in the second half to restore parity, Greg Stewart tucked home the winning penalty in the 94th minute to give Jamshedpur the win.
Speaking about the game, the head coach said:
"I said after the game, we should have come away with a result from the last one. I think when we went a goal down, Jamshedpur started quicker than we did. Plus after we lost (Ahmed) Jahouh, we didn't adjust quickly and conceded the second. Once we got into halftime and we were able to adjust our team I was very impressed and happy with how we came out in that second half."
As mentioned above, Mumbai City FC midfield general Ahmed Jahouh suffered an injury early on in the Jamshedpur game. Head coach Des Buckingham said the Islanders will have to wait for the scan reports before confirming his availability for the next game.
Against JFC, Jahouh was replaced by Vinit Rai, who was taken off at half-time for Brad Inman after the reigning champions conceded two goals in the first half.
Asked by Sportskeeda about the reason behind the substitution, Buckingham said:
"We've played with two holding midfield players all season. So with Jahouh coming off, I brought on Vinit just to get some consistency in our playing style. When we went 0-2 down, we hadn't quite settled. At halftime, I just felt that we needed to change and what we did in the preseason, we played with one six.
"Obviously, Vinit joined us in January, so in terms of making sure we had players on the field that would best understand what we were trying to do in a very quick timeframe, we took Vinit off. I explained and apologized to Vinit, because it's never nice to bring somebody on and bring them off. But it has nothing to do with performance."
