AFC Leopards chair Dan ShikandaNairobi News

Shikanda: AFC Leopards will have better team in KPL than last season

AFC Leopards chairman Dan Shikanda has assured fans they will have a better team than they had in the last campaign.

Ingwe have already started training ahead of the season but while most of the big teams have confirmed new signings, the club is yet to unveil even a single player apart from striker Elvis Rupia, who has signed a short term deal to extend his stay at The Den.

Ingwe chairman Shikanda has now urged the fans to remain patient, insisting they will soon unveil their new signings but most importantly stressed that they "will have a better team than last season.”

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“Our fans should not panic at all, they should not be affected by our silence in terms of the new signings, we have already talked to our targets and we will unveil them soon,” Shikanda told Goal on Tuesday.

“Just a few months ago, the same fans were saying we will bare-chested because we did not have jerseys for the new season, but we have unveiled them and now they have gone silent, we are doing our job silently, I don’t want them to panic, let them be assured we will have a good team, better than what we had in the previous seasons.”

On Monday, Shikanda told Goal they will use the newly re-opened Nyayo Stadium for their home matches in the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) this season.

The 45,000-capacity stadium, which was closed in 2017 for renovations to host the 2018 Africa Nations Championships (Chan), which was later moved to Morocco over Kenya's unpreparedness, was officially re-opened on Friday by President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“It is very exciting that we are now going to use Nyayo Stadium for our home matches during the new season,” Shikanda told Goal.

“We had suffered a lot of travelling every weekend to Machakos for our home matches, the expenses were on the higher side.

“But during our recent visit to State House when President Kenyatta was handing over the new team bus to us, we pleaded with him to have the venue ready for the new season, and I am happy he listened to our pleas and made sure it is ready before the new season kicks off.

“Nyayo has always remained the home of AFC Leopards and we want to thank Kenyatta and the government for the work they have done in the venue, by using it as our home ground, it will help cut on costs as we used to spend a lot of money travelling to Machakos.”

Ingwe have already been linked with a number of new signings, among them Peter Thion’go from Kakamega Homeboyz and Harrison Mwendwa from Kariobangi Sharks.

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