ISL 2018-19: Jorge Costa pleased with Mumbai City's second-half display

Mumbai City head coach Jorge Costa was impressed with his team's second-half performance in their 4-2 win against Delhi Dynamos at the JLN Stadium on Monday.

An own goal by Soubik Chakraborty in the third minute gave Delhi the lead and a Rafael Bastos spot-kick before the break restored parity. The second half saw the visitors come to life and add three more goals to seal three points. 

"I think first six to 10 minutes my team was completely asleep. The first half was poor and it is not the Mumbai I am used to seeing in the last few games. Second half, I had a talk with the team and we changed a few things. What I saw in the second period is the Mumbai I want to see. We were very bad in the first period but I am very happy with the performance to come back and win," Gombau shared his thoughts on the match. 

"Second half it was an open game. We didn’t defend in numbers since we were always looking to score another. It is difficult since we arrived at the hotel at 10:30 last night. When you are losing, you want to fight for the result which we did. I am happy despite us conceding two goals after four consecutive clean sheets. If I get the same result until the end of the league, I will be a very happy man."

Mumbai City have a difficult set of fixtures coming up, with Chennaiyin and Bengaluru FC next in line in the space of six days.

"We must be ready for this. This is why we work hard so hard in training. After one game like today, it is much easier to recover. In two days we will have another fight."

Analysing Mumbai's playoff hopes, Costa said, "Yesterday (Sunday) I was watching what happened last season. Everybody thinks that maybe 30 points are enough to stay in the top four.

"I saw amazing things last night. I saw Delhi had four points at this stage and they ultimately finished with 19. ATK had 11 points in the first half of the league and then got only 4 in the remaining matches.

"Of course, we have a target, but we must fight for three points every game. Almost every coach wants to finish in the top 4 and even I want that for my team. So (required points) it keeps changing game by game. We have to take it game by game and then see."