The hierarchy of Nigeria Professional Football League side, Abia Warriors, say they are frustrated by media suggestions the club should do away with their chairman, Pastor Emeka Inyama, in the aftermath of what it called ‘unsubstantiated’ allegation he eased out the club’s quality players during the off season without adequate replacement, hence their harvest of woes in the two week old 2018/2019 NPFL season,National Daily learnt.
Abia Warriors are without a point in the opening two matches of the season following 1-0 defeat at Nasarawa United and a 2-1 defeat at home by Go Round FC.
The poor start to the abridged 2018/2019 season elicited media backlash insinuating the club boss was to blame, which officials of the club are insisting was a misplacement of fact and outrightly unfounded report aimed at underplaying the efforts of the club’s boss to take the team to the zenith.
“No one of us at Abia Warriors is happy with the results so far but to heap it on the door steps of our chairman is most unfair and misdirected”, starts an official of the club.
“It happens like that in football. Sometimes you can start well and end up poorly and of course you can start poorly and end well.
“There are clubs who didn’t start well like Kwara United but they still believe they can get it right along the line because the NPFL is a marathon and not a 100 meters dash”, the official said to Scorenigeria, insisting the club’s chairman ensured the club enjoyed a sound and quality preseason preparation.
“We enjoyed a good preseason build up which I believe no other club enjoyed”, the official continued.
“First, we participated in the second edition of the South East/South South Preseason Tournament in Abakaliki where we emerged runners-up.
“After that, we went into a two-week closed door camping at Nanka, Anambra State from where we moved to the Garden City Gov Wike Unity Cup football tournament.
“We did not end there as we engaged our players with some top level friendly matches before sending them to a concentration camp in Port Harcourt from where we moved to Lafia for our first match of the season against Nasarawa United.
“Tell me, how many teams under the present situation in the country did that for their clubs?”.
The Abia Warriors official claimed that the allegation of selling off the team’s quality players was unfounded.
“As far as we are concerned, only three players, goalkeeper Chinedu Anozie who went to FC Ifeanyiubah, Ekoi Akor and Ossy Martins who went to Rivers United were actually dropped while striker Ndifreke Effiong was loaned to Akwa United on (his) request.