Arrows fail to take advantage of East Bengal's makeshift defence
As mentioned earlier, East Bengal played with a back-three because of the number of attacking players that Jamil fielded.
The defence for the Red and Gold brigade was Eduardo Ferreira, Salam Ranjan Singh and youngster Mehtab Singh. Arnab Mondal did not feature. That meant the pacy Indian Arrows forwards were able to make runs behind the defence and catch the East Bengal off-guard at times.
There were spells in the game where East Bengal's defence was all at sea. The Arrows took advantage of this anxiety as they looked to hit East Bengal on the counter.
And they really could have stolen the points when substitute Suresh Wagjam latched onto a good out-ball from defence to break free of the East Bengal defence and put a good ball into the box. Abhijit Sarkar was left with a simple finish to give his side the lead with the East Bengal defence scrambling to get back into position, but he could not get any power behind it and his tame effort went straight into the hands of the East Bengal keeper.