By George Akpayen
Fatai Osho now facing strong criticism over Akwa United’s poor start to the Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) this season has owned up to his team facing a major crisis in the course of their matches.
The Akwa United head coach watched in disbelief as his men struggled to a 1-1 with Kwara United at their Eket Stadium home ground on Saturday and immediately pointed out that he is faced with a goalscoring crisis.
He is also proffered a solution to the crisis saying the club need to bring in new “personnel to that attack.”
The former Enyimba coach also revealed how they (Akwa United) were beaten to the signatures of strikers on their wishlist before the start of the season.
“We have shown overtime that we have a fundamental problem going forward,” Osho began after the match.
“You saw it today (against Kwara United). We had chances begging (to be converted) inside the box. These are things we need to correct and also, we will be bringing (new) personnel to that attack. We are not clinical (in the final third). Let us look at the stats of this match and the chances created especially attempts at goal, I mean it is a problem.
“We saw this problem before the season started and we tried to correct it and the management tried to get some players involved and we couldn’t. The big boys in Nigeria football were able to take those boys away from us.
“Also, there was no time to work on bringing desired players. Most of the players we had in our plans we couldn’t secure and that could have made the difference if we had succeeded. We are a team working so hard but going forward we are not the best,” said Osho.
The Akwa United trainer rued their failure to take their chances as well as the penalty miss by Uche Collins on 81 minutes and absolved him of blame.
“You can see earlier in the game we had opportunities (to score) but we failed to take them and that emboldened the Kwara United team to come into the game. In the second half, the same played out with numbers of (scoring) opportunities and the (lack of) element of luck played its part. We could have wrapped the game up with that late penalty.
“Someone who scored the first penalty we could not have afford not to entrust him with the second spot kick (which he missed). From that point it was a bit difficult for us because we had to do many things in a hurry which I tried to calm them in a bid to play to our own rhythm and open them up. And that is football for what it is, as we ended up playing into the hands of the Kwara United team. We’ve been unfortunate but things have changed this season in the league because teams can go on the road and get points,” Osho said.
Akwa United have managed to take 11 points from 11 matches which has left them in 17 th position ahead of their trip to the Sani Abacha Stadium, where they will face Kano Pillars on Wednesday, December 6.