With just two weeks to kickoff of the 2017 Nigeria National League, NNL, Head Coach of Kogi United FC, Ishaya Jatau has raised concern over his side’s lack of scoring goals which he described as major missing link in Nigerian club football.
Kogi United have been intensifying their preparations ahead of the new second tier football league season which is expected to begin on 17th of this month with their engagements in series of friendly matches.
The Confluence state club just returned from a week training tour of south west where they played four games and could not recorded any goal despite their impressive performances.
The Lokoja based NNL side first played a goalless draw against Aare Aafe Babalola FC before recording the same result against Ekiti United FC with both games played in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
United moved to Osogbo, the Osun State capital where they engaged Osun United in another friendly and lost 1-0 before finally take on another NNL counterpart, Crown TC of Ogbomoso with a another barren draw recorded.
While describing the friendly tour as timely and positive, Jatau noted that his side would work on their scoring tactics before the commencement of the new league season.
“The games are good, it’s a preseason matches, and I’ve seen the lapses of my boys we will go and quickly work on it,” begin Jatau.
“We are getting ready for the season, we are going to try more pertaining to scoring which is more of concern to me, it’s a major deficiencies in Nigerian leagues, we don’t have many strikers with eyes and knack for goal anymore, but my defenders and midfielders are doing very well, we’ve shown great mentality that we are ready, we creating chances, but that scoring is the missing link which by God’s grace we will try work on before the season start,” the former ASEC Mimosa forward concluded.
Echoing his coach’s position on the club’s assessments and their readiness for the new NNL season, Team Manager of the Confluence state club, Ameh Henry noted that the club was 70 per cent ready for the new campaign adding that the strikers would be ready before the kickoff.
“First I’m happy that we have the opportunity to see what we have and I think we have exploited it well, we have seen the players’ strength, their ups and downs,
“It’s not too bad, it’s not beyond what we expected, even we knew our challenges have always been putting the ball in the net.
“All along we’ve seen a lot of revelations, the goalkeepers shown great performance, and we had so many of midfielders and defenders who did very well, if we can quickly work on finishing I think we are good to go.
Kogi United will be taking on FC Zamfara in Gusau when the new NNL campaign begin on 18th of March.
