PKL Auctions | What clicked and what didn’t – Puneri Paltan

Puneri Paltan entered last season with a fresh team and a new coach. Ashan Kumar Sangwan took over the duty as the chief coach from BC Ramesh for the sixth edition of the league. With players like Nitin Tomar in the raiding department and Girish Ernak and Sandeep Narwal forming the two corners of the team, it looked a decent side but slightly imbalanced. They had a good start to the season with Tomar just running through the defences of opponents. His sensational raiding efforts put the Paltan on the top of the teams in the initial passage of the tournament last year. However, his absence due to an injury after playing 11 games last season hurt the most for the Paltan. The other raiders like Rajesh Mondal and GB More couldn’t live up to what were expected from them. Ernak was too erratic at the left corner which was another big reason for their poor end to the campaign last season.

With U Mumba and Gujarat Fortuneginats maintaining dominance all through the season and Dabang Delhi making a late entry in the race to reach the play-offs with some amazing performance at their home, Puneri Paltan were left behind at the fourth position on the points table at the end of the league stage. They could manage only 52 points from 22 matches having a huge gap of 16 points with Delhi.

Coming into the seventh edition, the Paltan have roped in the legendary Anup Kumar as the new head coach of the team and he might be of great help for the side which had a terrible run in the last tournament. After deciding to release all their players from the previous edition, the team’s biggest move has been star raider Tomar, who was bought for a whopping Rs. 1.20 crore. The Paltan would want Tomar to give the full season to the team and play the way he did in the first 11 games when he was part of Paltan last year. Bringing in young Manjeet for Rs. 63 lakh from Patna Pirates has made sure that they have a support for Tomar this year unlike the previous one.  The raiding unit is further strengthened with the presence of Pawan Kadian and Darshan Kadian as both of them were bought for Rs 20 lakhs.

Although they have settled up their raiding combination for the next season but the problem still lies with the defence. Two senior defenders Surjeet and Ernak were not that good last season and a lot would depend on them in order for Paltan to bounce back with better efforts this year. On the other hand, the major problem lies with the positions especially on the left side of the mat. Ernak prefers to play at the corner but considering his erratic and rash tackling attempts, he might be seen at the cover position as the team lacks a proper left cover in the squad. That could, however, push Sagar Krishna to step in as a left corner defender although he didn’t play too many matches at that position for UP Yoddha with Sachin Kumar in their side. 

Nitin Tomar, Manjeet, Surjeet Singh, Girish Maruti Ernak, Darshan Kadian, Pawan Kumar Kadian, Satpal, Amit Kumar, Emad Sedaghat, Jadhav Balasaheb Shahaji, Hadi Tijak, Deepak Yadav, Sagar B Krishna, Shubham Shinde

Left in – Manjeet 

Right corner – Shubham Shinde