East Bengal’s Jayanta Sen vies with Bapan Bera of Eastern Railway in their CFL Premier Division match at the Howrah Stadium on Wednesday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta: After a 5-0 whitewash of the Calcutta Port Trust the other day, East Bengal on Wednesday just managed to clear the Eastern Railway hurdle by a Jayanta Sen strike.

Having played their last match of the Sahara CFL Premier Division on Monday, the fatigue was evident on the red and gold brigade at the Howrah Stadium.

“It’s difficult to play matches with a day’s gap and perhaps that is the reason why we couldn’t deliver the goods today. We should have won 4-0,” said Jayanta, who scored the winner in the 27th minute.

Though East Bengal seemed a marginally improved side, it would have been a different story if Eastern Railway forwards Bapi Halder and Obribai Benjamin were on target during two occasions. East Bengal’s defence comprising Aibor Khongjee, Majek Bolaji, Madhab Das and Anupam Sarkar was never in trouble and so were their counterparts. Babun Kar, Santanu Bit and Emeka Ejike also made it absolutely difficult for the likes of Edmilson Marques and Ashim Biswas.

The goal came when Anupam, after doing all the hard work, squared it to an advancing Jayanta, who did not make any mistake to score his first goal of the season.

“Always the forwards score…but now it was turn for a midfielder to do the needful and I am happy to contribute to the team’s success,” Jayanta said.

East Bengal coach Subrata Bhattacharya made two changes, bringing in Gurpreet Singh and Snehasish Chakraborty in places of Madhab and Mehtab Hussain, respectively, just after the lemon break. Both the changes worked in their favour, producing some good moves but only off-target.

In the dying minutes, substitute Vanlal Rova failed to take control of the ball in what could have been the easiest goal of the match. East Bengal, by virtue of this win, garnered 22 points from nine matches — a point less from leaders Mohun Bagan — while Eastern Railway remained on eight from 10 outings.

The referee, Pradip Mukherjee, controlled the situations well enough whenever the players showed their extra emotions on the field.

TEAMS

East Bengal: Gopal Das, Aibor Khongjee, Majek Bolaji, Madhab Das (Gurpreet Singh 64), Anupam Sarkar, Dipankar Roy (Vanlal Rova 77), Jayanta Sen, Mehtab Hussain (Snehasish Chakraborty 54), Hardeep Singh Saini, Ashim Biswas, Edmilson Marques.

Eastern Railway: Tapan Kumar Karmakar, Babun Kar, Santanu Bit, Maduekwe Emeka Ejike, Parvez Alam, Sanjit Dutta Bhowmick, Niladri Chakraborty (Chandan Turi 79), Antony Soren (Jaydeep Bose 46), Bapan Bera (Farid Ali Molla 70), Bapi Halder, Obribai Benjamin.

Referee: Pradip Mukherjee.