Kolkata, Jan 2 (IANS) Ten-man Chennai City FC stunned former champions Mohun Bagan 2-1 in an I-League encounter at the latter’s Maidan club ground here on Tuesday.

Kyrgyz defender Veniamin Shumeiko (71st minute) scored the winner in the second half after Jean Michael Joachim’s (6th) early goal was cancelled out by Ansumana Kromah from the penalty spot in the 36th minute.

Chennai’s Pradeep Mohanraj was sent off for a hand ball inside the 18-yard box in the 35th minute. But despite enjoying numerical advantage for close to an hour, the city giants failed to spark any magic and were especially poor in the second essay.

They direly missed the services of star Haitian forward Sony Norde who is nursing an injury as the likes of Kromah, Dipanda Dicka and Azharuddin Mallick lacked teeth up front.

The result saw the home team extend their winless run to four matches while Chennai rode the win to jump to seven points and join Indian Arrows at the seventh position.

Mohun Bagan remained on 10 points from seven games at the fifth position.

The visitors stunned Mohun Bagan by taking the lead as early as the sixth minute.

Sourav Das gave away the ball cheaply in midfield to Murilo Ribeiro De Almeida who set up Joachim with the French forward slotting the ball past Mohun Bagan goalkeeper Shilton Paul and into the far corner.

One minute later, Murilo robbed Sourav off the ball once again but this time his audacious volley from range was fumbled initially by Shilton who held it at the second attempt to allow under-fire coach Sanjoy Sen a sigh of relief.

Seeing Sourav struggling to hold the ball, Sen replaced him with Surchandra Singh in the 25th minute and that changed the fortunes somewhat for the green and maroons.

Kromah’s volley cannoned off the crossbar after the Liberian footballer received the ball beautifully to flick it up in the air and wrap his foot around it.

Chennai were dealt a body blow soon after when Pradeep Mohanraj — who had minutes ago made a goalline clearance — was given the marching orders for using his hand to keep the ball from going into the net off Shilton Dsilva’s header.

Mohanraj went into an argument with referee Santosh Kumar almost snatching the red card from him. Kromah stepped up to take the resultant penalty, converting with ease.

Post the breather, Chennai upped the tempo and weren’t looking like a side with a man down. They were rewarded when Shumeiko nodded in skipper Michael Soosairaj’s corner past Shilton. Shumeiko could have had a brace to his name and Chennai could have won 3-1 had his shot not come off the horizontal in the 89th minute.

–IANS
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