Ashley Westwood breaks silence on Vibin Mohanan and Adrian Luna captaincy buzz

As Kerala Blasters finally secure all the green flags for their first home game of the Indian Super League 2026/27 season, a big question was left unanswered for the fans: who will lead the club going forward? Adrian Luna was the club captain for the past few seasons, until he left for a loan stint away from the club. During that time, English manager Ashley Westwood cemented his place at the helm after pulling off a near miracle to lift the Blasters from the trenches.

Now that Luna has returned, many fans expected the armband naturally would go back to him, while many others believed it marked the beginning of a new era with Vibin leading the side. Ashley Westwood, on the contrary, has a different view on leading the club. He deployed local protege Vibin Mohanan to lead the side with the armband. With the uncertainty looming over leadership, Ashley Westwood became insightful about his take on the club leadership.

“We've got leaders in the dressing room. I lead the club as a head coach. If you look across all my teams, I always pick an Indian captain. If I were playing, it doesn't matter to me if I wear an armband or not. We know what leaders we have within our dressing room.”

“I think Vibin is a good prospect. Potentially, he could be very consistent for the Indian national team in years to come, and sometimes you give people the armband to see if they can improve their responsibility... to step up a little bit more, help them grow. That was the reason behind Vibin being given the captaincy,” said Westwood.

According to Westwood, the captaincy doesn’t guarantee anything to his players: “It doesn't mean that you're in the team week in, week out. We've got people like James Bolton, Momo (Yansane), Luna, Nebo (Kosovic). They're leaders anyway. It doesn't matter if you wear a red armband. We have a leadership group inside our club. We also have Amrinder (Singh), a local player, who wore the armband on numerous occasions and Aiban (Dohling), who is a consistent Indian figure.”

“The armband for me is superficial. Tomorrow we'll see who plays. It's not a question of throwing the armband and disrespecting it. We're quite secure in what we do. Vibin had it for a reason, and if he plays tomorrow, he'll have it again. For Luna, it won't change his game if he has it or not. It's just an armband. In football, you don't need an armband to be a leader,” added the Englishman.