CHENNAI: What’s ailing Chennaiyin FC? The defending champions have made their worst start to a campaign ever, playing three and losing three. But what will worry Chennaiyin boss John Gregory more than the zero in the points tally is the manner of the defeats.
Over the last four seasons, Chennaiyin have developed a somewhat stringent backline. This was especially true of Marco Materazzi’s second season in charge when his team had the best defence throughout the group stages and of John Gregory’s first year in charge when only Bengaluru FC let in fewer goals. This year though, none of that defensive stability has been visible. Last year saw Gregory’s men concede 19 goals over 18 games during the group stages. This year, they have already conceded eight in three.
It’s not as if they were undone by some irresistible pieces of attacking play — a lot of their woes have been of their own making. Take Thursday’s game against NorthEast United, for example.
The first goal stemmed from Eli Sabia’s failure to clear the ball, despite getting a couple of chances to do so. The second saw Bartholomew Ogbeche sneaking in behind the defender who was supposed to mark him and poking the ball past Karanjit Singh unchallenged. The third involved Ogbeche managing to sprint clear of the entire defence with nobody really having the pace to keep up with him. And the goal that cost Chennaiyin the match saw a rather poor clearance from Mailson Alves fall to Anirudh Thapa just outside the box, only for the latter to be easily dispossessed by eventually goalscorer Rowllin Borges.
It is not a trend that has escaped Gregory’s notice. “Today, we gifted four goals literally. Not the sort of thing I would expect from my team,” he said after the game. “For us to score three goals and not get anything is soul destroying. Our offensive players will be disappointed. They did their bit. I need to address our defence.”
But what has gone wrong for Gregory? Is it that key figures at the back like Henrique Sereno have departed while others like Inigo Calderon have arguably regressed? Is it that the football in the ISL has gotten a bit better but Chennaiyin’s backline has been unable to keep up? Whatever it is, Gregory is fast running out of time to stem the leak, despite this being pretty early days in the league. Last year, Chennaiyin lost four games all season. They already have three down in that part of the table.
The one thing Gregory can take heart from is that he has been here before. Chennaiyin’s first 45 minutes of last season saw them being torn apart by a clinical FC Goa with everyone pointing fingers at how bad their defensive structure was. Gregory went back to the drawing board and constructed one of the league’s best defences from that mess. He just has to pull that particular rabbit out of the hat again.
vishnuprasad@newindianexpress.com