Sunil likely to play in midfield as Mariners face HAL in Salt Lake

McDowell Mohun Bagan will be playing against HAL tomorrow in an I league match to be held in Salt Lake Stadium. In the last match, Mariners played their hearts out and certainly it was their best performance in the season, but due to poor refereeing and few costly mistakes from the defenders, they were held to a 2-2 draw by Dempo Sports Club.

Dempo right now are leading the table with 47 points from 22 matches whereas Mariners are in the 6th position with 39 points.

In their away match against HAL, the Mariners were trailing by 2 goals at half time, but made a strong comeback and scored 4 goals post-breather. In that match, Odafa Okolie scored a brace while Jewel Raja and Manish Maithani scored 1 goal each.

Anwar Ali who got injured in the last match will likely not be playing tomorrow. Rakesh Masih might pair with Kingshuk Debnath in stopper back position, in which case it will be either N. P. Pradeep or Subhashish Roy Chowdhury who will play as the holding medio.

Like last match, Sunil Chhetri will operate from a little deep behind Jose Barreto and Odafa Okolie. Jose Barreto said, "We will most probably be playing in the same formation in which we played the last match. Sunil Chhetri played good football and gave many good passes from midfield."

We will have to wait and see if Sunil can perform the way he did in the last match, but credit must definitely be given to Technical Director Subrata Bhattacharya for using Sunil Chhetri in the new position. Even at the end of the last match, Odafa Okolie said, "Sunil deserved the Man of the Match award, as he really played well today."

Mariners will have to be careful as 10 players have 1 yellow card against their name, Sangram Mukherjee, Murali Joseph, N. P. Pradeep, Ashim Biswas, Subhashish Roy Chowdhury, Hudson Lima, Anwar Ali, Rakesh Masih, Shilton Paul and Kingshuk Debnath.

After the practice session, Jose Barreto said, "We have 4 matches left, out of which 3 are home matches. We will try to win all the matches, so that we can finish in a better position in the league table."

Tomorrow's match will kickoff at 3:30 p.m.