It's too early for Lobi Stars to celebrate, says Solomon Ogbeide

The Pride of Benue gaffer has told his players point blank that they must start work on correcting the lapses noticed ahead of next game

Lobi Stars head coach, Solomon Ogbeide has revealed that they do not have anything to celebrate yet despite their qualification for the first round of the Caf Champions League after his wards laboured to a 2-0 home win over UMS de Loum in the preliminary round of the competition.

The game was played at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, Enugu on Wednesday after a last minute decision to move the fixture away from the Aper Aku Stadium, Makurdi because of some technical issues but the Pride of Benue players didn’t allow that to distract them after they scored a goal in each half through Sikiru Alimi and Yaya Kone in the 14th and 69th minutes to advance 2-1 on aggregate.

Even though Ogbeide admitted that goal scoring problem is a worldwide malaise but he pointed out that he was not happy with the way his players spurned several scoring chances and that they are going back home to immediately resume work on tutoring their attackers the act of converting scoring chances.

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"What should you expect? I should be highly elated of course,” Ogbeide told the media.

“It is the desire of every coach to win a game and that is what I have just done. It is not yet uhuru because we still have work to do to be better than we are. We will go back and make corrections. Goal scoring problem is a global problem. It is not peculiar with Lobi Stars alone but every day we go back and continue practising.

Next Match

“We will begin to do goal scoring exercises until it becomes part of us. Football is no basket ball where any time you go down there you dunk. We will begin to do our best and I believe it should be enough to get us what we desire.

The tactician believes that they won’t have any problem having fan base in Enugu which has become their home in continental games this season because they play good football and he enjoins Enugu fans to come and support Lobi Stars in their subsequent game just like they do to Enugu Rangers who are also representing Nigeria on the continent this term.

“Our fan base is here because we play good football and Enugu football fans like good football. Even though we didn’t score many goals did not take it away from us that we did play good football."