Goalmouth action from the Mohammedan Sporting versus Railway FC tie at the East Bengal ground on Thursday. Picture by Santosh Ghosh

Calcutta: Mohammedan Sporting crashed to their fifth defeat in the Super Division, losing by a Suraj Mondal goal against Railway FC at the East Bengal ground on Thursday.

Mohammedan Sporting, thus, remained on 10 points from nine matches while Railway FC moved up to 10 from as many outings.

It was a listless encounter with action mainly confined to the midfield in the first half. It was only after Railway FC scored in the 60th minute that Mohammedan Sporting showed some urgency to invade the rival territory.

Suraj had troubled the Mohammedan Sporting defence even in the first session and after the breather he shot over from close with only the goalkeeper to beat.

The goal, which resulted following a pass from Gourab Datta, came after Suraj’s first shot was parried by Chinmoy Banerjee and the Railway FC player was quick to pounce on the rebound.

The flurry of Mohammedan Sporting attacks thereafter, however, lacked direction. The four-man forwardline showed very little cohesion and never looked threatening.

The halfline was almost non-existent, with none able to control the pace of the game.

Railway FC had two lucky escapes when Habib Ali and Stanley Festus’ headers, both from Amjad Hussain’s corners, struck the woodwork.

TEAMS

Mohammedan Sporting: Chinmoy Banerjee, Bidesh Pal, Naushad Moosa, Anit Ghosh, Ratan Singh, Amjad Hussain, Jiten Rai (Biswarup Bishu, 60), Stanley Festus, Raman Vijayan (Habib Ali, 63), Henry Chukwukei (Danny Muinaro, 88), Siddharth Thapa.

Railway FC: Somen Mondal, Dwaipayan Majumder, Abhijit Dutta, Sundar Mandi, Shibshankar Chowdhury, Gourab Datta, Tarun Nath, Subhranil Dutta, Bablu Banik (Sandip Karmakar, 45; , Tapan Sarkar 90+1), Shuklal Bhumij, Suraj Mondal.

Referee: Subrata Das.