11.9.2007 – that was the last time Bagan went down aganst KingfisherEast Bengal 2-3, as bhaichung Bhutia’s goal was cancelled by referee K. Shankar. After that Bagan went for a dream run and remained unbeaten for 9 matches. But Syed Rahim Nabi had finally led his club to break the jinx on 22.2.2009

Nabi played pretty well today  having scored 2 goals in the first half and had the final pass to Sunil Chettry who scored the third. Bagan went down 0-3. That means, Bagan went down in the 2nd position of the iLeague, and Sporting clube de Goa moved up. That also means sharing the platform with Manchester United of 11 consecutive wins – came to an end.

Not only Nabi, Yakubu, Abhra Mandal and M. Suresh played really well for KEB today. Bagan failed to break the KEB defense – as either Suresh or Abhra was there to stop Bagan from scoring. One should give full credits to Subhash Bhawmik’s team for this scoreline.

At the same time AIFF must review and see whether the referring standard of this game was up to the mark. There were some mistakes – and was all of them unintentional ? For e.g. Bhaichung  Bhutia was trapped inside the penalty box by Mehrajuddin but surprisingly the referee instead of awarding a penalty , booked Bhainchung. The second goal KEB scored was from a free kick that was gifted to KEB by the referee. There were few other occasions where the referee allowed KEB players to play act – waste time and earn free kicks. Throw-in for Bagan were converted to free kicks for KEB.

Besides, the midfield really flopped and defense seem to e fragile. Karim needs to repair this fast since Bagan will be facing Churchill next – and won’t get Bhaichung Bhutia’s service thanks to Dinesh Nair.