Bagan manage to draw the match against Pune FC.At the Balewadi Sports Complex it is the match of round nine for Mohun Bagan. In the 29th and 74th minute Chikawali and Arata respectively scored for home team. In the 73rd and 83rd minute Odafa scored twice for Bagan and earn hard-fought 1 away point. Bagan will next play in the I League, Kingfisher East Bengal at 9th of December.

Mohun Bagan’s loss against Dempo has raised some eye brows – the team played well for first 40 mins – and could have been up 3-0, but lackluster attitude of the players stopped Bagan from getting early leads – and instead Bagan conceded two goals in last 5 mins of the first half. Added to it – Saha’s marching order and a brilliant long ranger from Franco added wows to Bagan. mohunbaganclub.com tries to review the pain points of the team.

One of the major factors of the current squad is injury. Key players suffering from injury include –

Arindam Bhattacharya, Echezona Anyichie, Khelemba Meetei, Syed Rahim Nabi, Manish Maithani and Tolgay Ozbey (this list is from the expected first XI) – so Bagan basically have a team where 6 of the key players are unavailable for duty.

Of the remaining players, only Odafa can create panic in opponent box. If we recall the Dempo game, we can recollect how Sabeeth or Lalrinfela missed opportunities. So, not only injury, but the inabilities of the players stopped Bagan from getting full points.

If we see how opponents are guarding Odafa and what others are doing, we can have a fair amount of idea of the problems the team is having.

If you take a note of the diagram – you will notice that there is a layer of defense around Odafa – and at least 5 players are guarding him. But Bagan is failing to take the advantage of this – as other players are still trying to shoulder off the responsibilities by just trying to pass the ball to Odafa in the penetrating zone. One does not know if this is because of the inabilities of the other players or instruction of the coach or lack of awareness of the position of the opponents that is stopping other players to move into the attacking third (thanks to the recruiters who let players like Sueoka or Deepak walk off from the team and substitute them with players like Stanley!)

Unless Bagan improve on this – we would continue to lose vital points and remain somewhere in the middle of the League table.

Odafa Okolie failed to score and as a result Mohun Bagan couldn’t register their win against weak ONGC in New Delhi. So, Bagan is now with 7 points from 5 matches. Nirmal and Shilton, the two Bagan boys have been booked. Mariners will play the next match against Salgaocar on 17th November, Saturday at home soil. After this match Bagan’s new coach Karim Bencharifa will join the team.