Indecent behaviours from some of the club supporters after ONGC match was absolutely intolerable. Surkumar Singh – whose outstanding performance was one of the very few the supporters and fans could be happy about – was at the receiving end. His car was attacked and the windscreen broken – an act worth severe punishment. we understand the sentiments of the fans and followers of the Green and Maroon brigade and every Mohun Bagan supporter will be upset because of the poor performance of the team. This does not mean that the players’ properties will be damaged – particularly when they are giving 100%

The fans should instead have introspected the following –

1. Why only 8 points from last 9 games in iLeague ? Why is fitness a problem for the players? Was pre-season camp proper – if not will the players be blamed for the same?

2. Why "Diamondstar" and "Muritala" were considered as replacements of Sueoka and Marcos?

3. What is happening with the goalkeeping coach? In spite of Sangram having problems in judging the ball for years – and poor outing decisions that have been costly for last 5 years – why the goalkeeping coach failed to fix this problem?

4. Why is Muritala falling in offside traps day-in and day-out ?

5. While the opponents, by sitting in the side bench, notice the gap in the defense how come the TD failed to identify the same in each of the games?

6. And most importantly  – why there was no club official in the ground to take care of the players? What if a player could have been seriously injured ? The club officials become busy showing their faces before the cameras during the good time – but they fail to shield the players during the hard times – alas – they will perhaps never learn!

As we have reached the fag end of 2010-11 season, the under current of possible transfer news have started floating across Indian football arena. This is the time when, we, the supporters of the National Club of India, should stand behind our club management and help them identifying the best possible recruits for the next season. This is one such article where a die-hard Mariner has put forward his thought and expectation for next season’s dream team.

What is the right word to describe the current season? Dismal, pathetic, horrible, disgraceful? Probably these words are not enough to describe our performance in 2010-11 season. Every MB fans are just waiting for the remaining part of the season to get over as soon as possible and look forward to the next season. Let’s try to analyze the weakness of our current squad and the position where we need some replacement to have a better 2011-12 season.

 

Coaching Staff:

The current coaching staff is good enough to help MB win ILeague if the squad is good and well balanced. We have AFC A license holder coach Sujit Chakraborty who has decent Indian football experience after coaching ONGC and then MB for a season. However the control of steering should be in the safe hands of TD Subhas Bhowmik who is certainly one of the best managers in Indian football having quite good track record, good football brain and excellent man management skills. We have Hemanta Dora as our goalkeeping coach who is playing this role for last few seasons and we shouldn’t have many questions about his caliber or contributions. What MB really needs next season is a foreign educated physical trainer and a genuine team doctor. It’s ridiculous that a football club who has good vision and proper planning doesn’t have a physical trainer, team doctor.
 

Goalkeeper:

This area has been quite a let down for MB this season. Although Shilton Pal played exceptional football in few matches this season(specially Fed Cup and few Ileague matches) but everybody will agree that he has been quite poor in few matches and his inconsistencies under the bar has cost few matches for us. Our second goalkeeper Sangram Kumkherjee has really passed his prime and we can have him as third goalkeeper in our squad for the next season but not second goalkeeper anymore. We must recruit one of the top Indian goalkeepers like Arindam Bhattacharya, Subrata Pal, Subhasis Rowchudhury and Shilton, Sangram as backup.

The fourth goalkeeper should be an U19 one so that in Kolkata League he can play in first XI and that resolves dilemma of coach which position to use an U19 player. This way in Kolkata league we can ensure that our first XI balance will not be lost and at the same time we are providing opportunity a talented U19 goalkeeper to come into spotlight which is better for him and also for the club’s future.

Sidebacks:

This is another area of concern of our team as we don’t have a decent reserve right back and a good first XI left back this season. Surkumar can’t play all 55-60 matches of the season at his age and we need someone who can play at least 20 matches in the first XI when Surkumar can be rested. In the left back position we have Mohunraj again one player who can’t be fully depended in important matches against tough rival. We can have him as our reserve left back but we definitely need someone like Robert of Churchill as first XI left back.

Stoppers:

If we learn at least little bit from our mistakes in fast 2 seasons we will understand that a foreign(specially big bodied African) defender is a must in our squad to stop ferocious strikers like Odafa, Ranty, Chiddi. An avergae stopper like Peter Odafe managed to stop these foreign strikers in some of the matches for MB in 2008-09 season which was the most successful season for MB is last 9 years. We saw that even after having 5 national team defenders in our squad in Shield final MB couldn’t stop Churchill and conceded 2 goals.
The foreign defender should be accompanied by Anwar Ali(first XI), Deepak Mondal(when Anwar not available), Arnab Mondal(Chirag), Sagram Mandi(utility player can be handy in Kolkata League), Kingshuk Debnath(strictly reserve bench, can play in multiple position which can be helpful in Kolkata league specially)

Midfield:

A team which doesn’t have a good midfield can never be successful as it is the backbone of the team. If we go 10 years back and look at our team we can understand why we managed to win 3 ILeagues in 5 seasons. People says a lot about contribution of Barreto, Igor, Stephen, Seriki but tend to forget about the dream midifled composed by Basudeb Mondal, James Sing, R.P. Sing, Renedy Singh, Jayanta Sen and Debajit Ghosh as defensive half. Without the fluidity of the midfield MB couldn’t have achieved that much of success in that period.

If we look at our current squad midfield is the weakest link which is the primary reason of our failure this season. We don’t have any ILeague standard midfielder in our squad apart from Snehasish Chakraborty in the left wing. Souvik Chakraborty and Manish Mathani has the talent but next season they really need to prove themselves that they can really carry forward our midfield for a season and won’t remain only as "talented future potential". However they are still not good enough to play in our first XI but can be asset in reserve bench. This is the season they have to become a first team player.

We need a young fresh foreign central midfielder in our first XI who can control the game. Someoen like Ogba Kalu or Beto can also do the job for us, however we should go for a fresh young player as we need someone who can serve our club for 5-6 seasons not one. Therefore Beto may not be a permanent solution in our central midfield as he is already in 30’s and has played the best part of his career for Dempo.

A very good right winger is the hour of the need for us where we have almost no one we can depend on. Vasum our own academy product is playing for our arch rivals and so also Sanju Pradhan another young bright winger of the country. We need someone like Vasum,Sanju or Steven Dias to play for us in the right side. Also age is with these 3 players and if we can get any of them for next few seasons will be really good for us.

 Forward:

Indian football is dominated by foreign strikers since last decade. We are also heavily depending on foreign striker pair for last 2 seasons. However as we can have only 3 foreigners in our squad and we need a defender and a midfielder therefore we can afford to have only one foreign striker this season if we really want to build a balanced squad to win ILeague. We should have someone like Ranty Martins/Edeh Chiddi in our frontline(Odafa is not a team man and it’s better not to have someone in the squad who can break unity in the team) accompanied by good Indian strikers. As Sunil Chetri is contracted by Chirag only for 3 months we should definitely get him in our squad as he is the best striker in he country. We should bring Anil Kumar from Viva Kerala who is scoring plenty of goals this season, bring back Branco who has huge talent and retain Ashim.

However all these are only expectations from supporters and the final decision is taken only by the officials. Seeing all the news from TV channels and newspapers it looks like our officials have not yet taken some tough decision like saying goodbye to some of the ‘veterans’. Let’s see what future holds for us.

Following are the set of players who can form a good team and give us some hope of winning ILeague for the fourth time.

1. Arindam Bhattacharya
2. Shilton Pal
3. Sangram Mukherjee
4. U19 Goalkeeper

5. Surkumar Singh
6. Denzil Franco
7. Robert
8. Mohanraj
9. Young tall African stopper
10. Anwar Ali
11. Deepak Mondal
12. Arnab Mondal
13. Kingshuk Debnath
14. Sagram Mandi

15. Sanju Pradhan
16. U19 right wing

17. Snehasish Chakraborty
18. Rahim Nabi
19. Dipendu Duwari

20. Fresh young central attacking midfielder/Beto
21. Mehtab Hossein
22. Souvik Chakraborty
23. Manish Mathani
24. Lalkamal Bhowmik
25. Rakesh Masih
26. U19 central defensive midfielder

27. Fresh young striker/Ranty Martins/Edeh Chiddi
28. Sunil Chetri
29. Anil Kumar
30. Branco Cardoza
31. Ashim Biswas

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author are solely his personal opinion. This should not be treated as the collective representation of all the supporters and fans. mohunbaganclub.com has treated this article as one representative wish list of a fan out of millions bright minds of Mohun Bagan fans spreading across the globe.

 

Mohun Bagan shared point with Chirag United in the 21st round of i-League. For Chirag United Sunil Chetry scored from a spot kick earlier in 31st minute of the 1st half but later in the second half Muritala Ali equalized the score by a brilliant header in 80th minute.

Bapi Saha got the marching order, he was cautioned twice, as a result he was shown red card in the 24th minute of the match. But Mohun Bagan was not looking a better side against one man down Chirag this time. As a result of that Bagan concieved a goal by Sunil Chetry from a spot kick in the 31st minute. Joshimer was pushed  by Karan Atwal from behind and he fall on to the ground inside the penalty box. Referee gave the penalty in favour of Chirag and Sunil Chetry stretched the margin (0-1). 

Earlier in the 21st minute  Ashim was injured due to a spot jump for a goal bound head. And he had to leave the field. Gouranga Dutta came in the place of Ashim Biswas. Ashim is uncertain for the next match.

After the lemon break Bagan tried to restore their better game but the goal was not coming. In the 63rd minute Mariners three consecutive corners but none brought good luck for them. Eventually Bagan got 17 corners in the match so far. 

In the 65th minute Snehasis was replaced by Ishfaq. Dipendu Dowary came in the place of Souvick Chakraborty in the 78th minute of the match.

In the 80 minute of the match Jayanta gave a long ball to Chidi and Chidi’s head found the head of Muritala and Muritala’s drop head placed the ball in to the net. (1-1).

Chirag skipper Joshimer was shown red card by referee Santosh Kumar while he fouled badly Jayanta Sen. But just after two minutes of the incident Bagan skipper Edeh Chidi hit Justin off the ball inside Chirag box and he was shown red card by the referee. So last 15 minutes Bagan was down to 10 men and Chirag down to 9 men.

In the stoppage time Jayanta’s shot hit the post and Muritala tried with backvolley to score from the rebound but he could connect the ball properly. However, this was the brilliant effort by Jayanta Sen and Muritala Ali.

Teams:

Mohun Bagan: Shilton, Surkumar, Kingshuk, Karan, Mohanraj, Jayanta,Souvik(Dipendu), Ashim( Gouranga), Snehasish(Ishfaq), Chidi, Murital.

Chirag United: Abhijit, Bapi, Chika, Justine, Sukhen, Lalkamal, Choi, Tulunga, Josimar, Sunil, Jerry(Narugopal).