Enyimba will not let up after an impressive start to this season’s Nigeria Professional Football League and will look to keep amassing points to help hedge against a possible downturn in form, Usman Abd’Allah, coach of the defending champions says.
The Aba based side who are away at Sunshine Stars on Wednesday, are unbeaten in the league this season and currently, sit second on the log with seven points after three matches.
They have scored six goals in their last two games following up a 3-1 defeat of Narasawa United with a similar scoreline in dispatching 2017 Aiteo Cup champions Akwa United at the Enyimba Stadium on Sunday.
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The Kano born tactician has described their form as encouraging and says the team must take advantage of their early season form to grab as many points as possible, to serve as a buffer for when the tough times come.
“It’s encouraging, there is a lot of confidence in the team. All of the boys are responding very well and the most important thing is the three-point that will shift us in a better position in the league,” he said.
“It’s better we keep on grabbing the points as early as possible before it becomes too late.”
The two-time winners of the CAF Champions League will be competing in Africa’s second-tier club competition, the CAF Confederation Cup, this season but that wasn’t always the plan.
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The Aba Elephants qualified for the champions league when they won an unprecedented eighth league title last season and invested heavily in refurbishing their squad in anticipation of a run deep into the competition.
But their hopes of a third champions league title was curtailed prematurely when they lost to Al Hilal Omdurman in the preliminaries, getting demoted to the confederation cup as a result.
Abd’Allah attributes their failure to make the group stage of the champions league to the initial “mistakes” he made trying to mould disparate players into a cohesive unit.
Although he believes he has been able to get the balance right, he says more work is needed to get the team exactly where he wants them.
“The beginning of the season, it was so early for us and it was very difficult in getting the results and we are out of the champions league just because of that because if we had had enough time to blend the team together, probably we should have been in the champions league,” Abd’Allah said.
“But, all the same, these are all mistakes that we have been learning and we will be correcting it and you see the league is helping us to make the team very very solid and we will continue working. We still have a lot of work but we will continue working until we get what we want.”
