El-Kanemi Warriors of Maiduguri coach, Aliyu Zubairu has charged his strikers to be clinical in front of goal and get really hungry for scoring, in order to revive the club’s fortunes in the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL).
Sports247.ng reports that Zubairu issued the wake-up call after seeing his players lose an avalanche of goal scoring chances in a 2-0 loss during their matchday 22 fixture away to Kwara United of Ilorin.
Zubairu admitted he was surprised seeing the often reliable trio of Salihu Nasiru, Umar Al-Amin and Abubakar Taheer fire blanks inside Rashidi Yekini Mainbowl at George Inih Stadium, Ilorin; hence his verdict that they must become clinical in their next fixture.
With statistics of the game giving El-Kanemi the edge on the number of attacks (63/65) and scoring attempts (33/34) while both sides shared five corners apiece, Zubairu reckoned that the result was not a true reflection of the game, though The Afonja Warriors outsmarted his team on possession (53/47) and shots at goal (10/9).
Zubairu moaned, “Everybody that knows football will understand what really happened in the game. The result of this game is not a true reflection of what actually happened during the match. I consider it was a case of Kwara United just being lucky, that’s all. Maybe they were hungrier, but if you go through the statistics, we had better chances … more number of chances than Kwara United. The only thing that happened was that Yuga was not in the game. Anybody who knows him should know what he can do.”
El-Kanemi Warriors then went on to specifically mention where the players he was counting on to make a difference eventually disappointed him, and he urged them to bounce back in order to perform better in their next game.
“Only Yuga lost more than three chances … not to talk of Al-Amin, not to talk of Nasiru, someone who is always very clinical in the 18. So, maybe Kwara United were hungrier, but the result is not a true reflection of how the game went. What gave them the game was the character that they showed. They were hungry for goals, unlike us. We were a little bit lackadaisical in our approach,” admitted Zubairu, who also doubles as the coach of Nigeria’s under-20 national team, Flying Eagles.
