I-League: Top five relegation deciders

Air India 1-0 JCT (May 8 2011)

JCT suffered relegation under the legendary Sukhwinder Singh

The current season of the I-League is highly competitive at both ends of the table but the battle for survival in the 2010-11 season is still considered to be the most evenly contested with direct meetings among the relegation contenders proving to be decisive. Going into this fixture, JCT had 23 points from 22 games while Air India had two less from 24 outings. So this game was an absolute must-win for Air India while JCT knew that even a point would be a good result as they still had three more games remaining. This campaign they relied on a young squad mostly comprising of their academy graduates while Air India had plenty of experience despite lacking in quality.

Eventually JCT’s inexperience showed as they went down 1-0 with Okorogor Praise scoring the winner but the importance of that result was only evident in the final round of games. JCT still had a couple of fixtures until their final fixture but they drew with United SC and then lost to Mohun Bagan. Air India incredibly lost 14-0 to Dempo in their final game of the season while JCT were beaten 2-0 by Salgaocar, who secured the title. With ONGC holding Mumbai FC and HAL beating Dempo, the bottom four teams finished on the same number of points but Air India and HAL survived as they were the top two of the mini head-to-head table counting the results of the clashes among the four sides with JCT’s loss to Air India proving to be costly. The Punjab club also disbanded its senior team after this relegation.