Every team will be out to make sure we don’t remain unbeaten: Des Buckingham

Panaji: Mumbai City FC have been brilliant this season, playing some eye-catching football, winning seven games in a row, scoring plenty of goals and remaining unbeaten in their first 12 games.
Des Buckingham’s side started with two draws in their first three games but since then, they’ve won eight of their nine matches with ATK Mohun Bagan the last team to snatch a point, almost two months ago.
Never mind the strong challenge from Hyderabad FC – they lead the table by a point, playing an extra game – for many, the title is Mumbai’s to lose. Some are even thinking they can be the first to win the league, unbeaten.
Buckingham is aware of all the chatter and the hype around his team but knows it’s pointless looking beyond the next game.
“That’s too far away,” Buckingham told TOI, asked if his side can win the league unbeaten. “We are eight games away to be talking about it and, starting with Kerala this weekend, every team will be out to make sure that does not happen.
“From my experience in this high-performance environment, (if) you take your eye off the ball and you look too far forward, you miss what's in front of your face. And what’s in front of our face is an in-form Kerala Blasters side that will do everything to take points and perform. We need to be ready for that.”
Mumbai won 2-0 against Kerala away in Kochi and should be the favourites to pick full points at home on Sunday. But Kerala, who made it to the final last season, are enjoying a fine run of their own. Ivan Vukomanovic’s boys are now unbeaten in eight games, winning seven of them.
Mumbai, though, are in a league of their own.
The former champions have scored two or more goals in 10 of their 12 matches so far and have rarely seemed troubled. They’ve scored 36 goals, more than any other team, and their young British coach, who signed a two-year extension last week, has been left in no doubt they can do even better.
“There are a lot of things that we have done right, but lot of areas that we need to keep getting better. It’s very pleasing, the performances, trying to get better and better. The longer the season goes on, teams will see you plan and try and come up with different ways to stop you. It’s the same that we do.
“This year, because of the consistency in terms of recruitment, we got 90 percent of the players we had last year with us this year. That's 15-months we spent together. They understand what we want to do and how we do it. And now we have five or six different ways of doing things, rather than one or two that we had last year, which is important now and will be important going forward,” said Buckingham.