Saiful Bari Titu, head coach of the Sheikh Russel Krira Chakra believes that they still have chance to remain in contention of title, despite trailing by five points to the table toppers of the Bangladesh Premier League. Titu, who has experienced as a head coach of all the domestic top teams and also the national team, detailed about Russel’s prospect to remain in the league’s title race when talking to The Independent yesterday.  

“Obviously it is still possible to remain on title race but we should not lose points to bottom sides.” said Titu. “Dropping points in the last match was especially disappointing because the team was a weaker to concede defeat, obviously we dominated in the first half and Bashundhara Kings playing with early domination scored the goal but again in the last few minutes we played one sided game and should score goals but could not and had to concede defeat.”  

“Equation was nice, if the match would at least a draw then three teams would become very close, the fighting for the title becomes exciting,” Titu added. “I think our big blow were two draws where from the other title contenders earned full three points but let see it is a long way to go.”

About the recovery of five point deficit to the table toppers Bashundhara, Titu said, “The second leg will depend on different factors, like - whether the squad would be same or will be changed at the mid window. As I informed that some of the lower positioned sides will make changes at the window, but what about us we are yet to decide.”

“But we have three matches left of this leg and there is no way to lose a single point and in the second leg will be cautious.”  

“To win the title, continuity of team’s performance should be maintained, interruptions- like the national team’s engagements would be happened but through this kind of problems we will have to maintain the environment of players’ fighting spirits, in terms of their physical and mental fitness.”

“We played every matches with full of energy but weaknesses in scoring, troubled us massively and sufferings may get bigger, if we do not improve. But I am happy with defense, as apart from Bashundhara, we conceded lowest goals, only four, Bashundhara three but we could score only 13 goals (nine matches) and Abahani scored 22 (10 matches).

“Scoring ability will also play a vital role in our title race fighting.  In fact our main striking force Raphel, who was the highest scorer last season could not click and injury of Abdullah is another big setback for us, actually from his set pieces and the crosses could help us much scoring goals.”  

“Foreign scorers are not consistent, we have none among local boys, who can help with scoring, like - Abahani have Jibon, Bashundhara have Matin Meah.”

About the league, “This time the league has become unbelievably competitive, some matches were very high level, in fact due to four foreign booters all teams get ready to throw challenge to any one.”