Ashley Westwood: "We deserved to lose" after 4-1 defeat to NorthEast United
Kerala Blasters FC were beaten 4-1 by NorthEast United FC at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium in their Indian Super League 2026-27 second game on 18th October, and head coach Ashley Westwood said the team "deserved to lose" following their first-half performance.
NorthEast United's Alaaeddine Ajaraie scored twice and teammates Aman CK and Antonio Moyano also found the net to build a comfortable lead, while Momo Yansané pulled one back for Kerala Blasters in the second half but the visitors could not overturn the deficit.
When asked about the match, Kerala Blasters head coach Ashley Westwood told reporters: “I think that’s just where we are in our season. Obviously, assembled late, there’s no excuses. We lost. We deserved to lose on the first half’s performance. We had a nice reaction after half-time. We scored the goal to make it 2-1. If we could have got another goal with the chances we created, it would have ended differently. We didn’t deserve to win, but at least we showed some reaction.”
Westwood addressed the squad's preparation and the challenges of integrating new players, saying: “Coming from a low state of fitness, we’ve got to learn about the players. We’ve got loads of new players. We’ve obviously not practised to find out about the new players. Every game, every training session, certainly in defeats, you learn more and more about your team. You learn more and more about who you need to change or swap or give other chances to other people.”
On the role of pre-season fixtures and the process of improvement, Westwood added: “That’s the reason you have pre-season. That’s the reason you have pre-season friendlies, to learn. You can’t expect to bring five new foreigners. That’s including Luna for me. I don’t know, eight, nine new Indians and expect to click your fingers and start straight away. I’ll learn, we’ll get it right, we’ll watch, we’ll analyse, and we’ll improve again from next week.”
He also commented on fitness levels and squad management during matches: “We’re getting better with our fitness. Lads are lasting 90 minutes, not getting cramps. We’re making different substitutions to try different combinations and solutions and see who’s suited for where. Like I say, this is football. You can’t win every game.”
to the immediate schedule, Westwood said: “We’ve got two more games before we have a little bit of a rest so we can do a bit of catch-up fitness-wise. If we go on to win a game and draw, for example, then you’d have to look at that and go eight points from a possible 12 or seven points, whatever it may be. It would be a good return considering what we’ve done. All we’ve got to do is stay in touch. One loss is not going to change our season. We build on it. We don’t be too down. We just work and work harder.”