The Men of Steel came back home to the Furnace for their third game of the season and managed to register their first win of the year. The Jamshedpur side went against NorthEast United and came out victorious with a goal to none to end the night. After earning their first 3 points of the season, Aidy Boothroyd talks about his thoughts on the team’s first win, the defensive strategies of the squad, and much more.

Here are the excerpts from the post-match press conference:

What are your thoughts about the first win of the season?

It was a good contest, a physical contest. For us, it's a good win because it means we got four points out of 3 games. That's a decent start to our journey, particularly against two teams that are amongst those on the top end of the league table. In terms of this game, we knew it was going to be a tough contest. They changed their system to playing a formation of 5-4-1 which is difficult to break through, so the fact that we scored from a set play means that we deserved the win tonight.

The team has been seen defending deep in the last 10-15 minutes of the games. Is that a specific strategy?

I don't think we are defending deep in all the matches. Today, we also had a chance where we could've scored and taken the score-line to 2-0 and it could have been game over. Sometimes we do look to play on the counter-attack as we have fast players on our side. I think when it's your first home game in a while and the support is amazing from the crowd, it's important to win the game for them but we also know we have to get better in certain aspects of our game. The majority of the time, we want to play on the front foot against opponents and we will get there eventually.

How do you reflect on the team’s defensive performance till now?

Against Odisha FC, there was a time when we decided to tie it up. The second game was against Mumbai FC, the team which had just won both the Hero ISL titles (in Hero ISL 2020-21)  and was in very good form. We had a game plan to stop them from scoring a lot against us and that we did. Tonight, we wanted to seal our first victory. We still have a lot of work to do going ahead, but we all are very happy with the result tonight. I thank all the fans who came through and gave us their full support tonight.

Will Jay Emmanuel Thomas play the full 90 minutes in the next match?

He's got a good chance to play the entire game. He's getting stronger and fitter by the day. Today, he had a good chance in the final few minutes and almost scored as well. He's an assister as well as a goal scorer, so he's got a good chance to be in the starting line-up for our next game.

Are the youngsters in the squad performing as per your expectations?

They are very good talented players. Young players need a head coach who can believe in them. It's a different feeling when the players perform well in the first season and get applauded a lot. So, we want them to stay focused like they were in the last season. I hope as the season progresses, the young players will be more consistent with their performances and I'll be happy if I get to see them grow every game.