ISL 2019-20: Phil Brown feels his Hyderabad FC side have 'mentality issues' after loss to Chennaiyin FC
Hyderabad FC came up on the losing side of a frantic final few minutes of injury time as they went down 1-2 away at Chennaiyin FC in the Indian Super League on Monday.
After conceding a goal in the second minute of stoppage time, Phil Brown's side hit back immediately to level through a corner and looked set to steal a point, but the home side scored again with effectively the final play of the match to condemn Hyderabad to their fourth loss of the season.
For much of the game Brown's side were on the backfoot, but were let off the hook by Chennaiyin's shortcomings in the final third. But the Englishman claimed the game wasn't a good spectacle and lamented the quality of his team's play throughout the game especially in the forward areas.
"I don’t think either team contributed to a great spectacle tonight. It wasn’t our game plan. Maybe the international break was the reason. We could not find a pass in the first 30 minutes", said Brown after the game.
Hyderabad's best chance fell to Robin Singh towards the end of the first half when Chennaiyin's offside trap didn't work, but the former Indian striker's shot was wayward with just the keeper to beat.
"Robin had a good chance. I thought the first goal would be important. I didn’t think the game would end like this. I thought the extra time was longer than 5 minutes", said Brown.
The Englishman felt this was another game where his side deserved to come away with something, but felt there was work to be done keeping in mind how his side faltered at the end today.
"I thought we deserved something from this game. We need to understand our issues and make sure we are mentally and physically prepared for the next game", said Brown.
Late game failures is something he said his side needed to work on and hoped his players were hurting from today's loss in order to drive them to do better in the upcoming games.
"We need a bit of mentality. That hurts me and I told my players if nobody is hurt from this, I don’t want them in my team. We have to take lessons from tonight’s defeat."
He underlined that he was keen to see his creative players have more of an influence on the game in the future.
"Our best two players were Kilgallon and Gurtej. That gave our wing-backs license to play. But I want my strikers to be the best players like Marcelinho or Bobo. That is not me being disrespectful towards Kilgallon or Gurtej."
Hyderabad next play defending champions Bengaluru FC later this week and Brown wants his side to be up for that challenge.
"It is my responsibility to educate the team. We have a big game against Bengaluru FC where we should get three points. We have to start believing that we can get something from such matches."