Akwa United assistant coach, Aliyu Zubairu has affirmed that the mistakes noticed in their friendly clash with Rivers United will be corrected before their game in the Federation Cup this weekend.
The Promise Keepers led twice in the fixture decided at the practice pitch of the Godswill Akpabio Stadium, Uyo through Ubong Friday and Michael Ibe but they were pegged back by goals from Hassan Yau and Bernard Ovoke.
Zubairu commended his players for ensuring that they made the game competitive against Rivers United but pointed out that he was not happy that they allowed their visitors to expose their inadequacies and had to settle for a draw.
“It was a good game even though we were the one in charge of the game and even led twice before they came from behind to equalize,” he told the media.
“It was not good enough for us to get a win but generally the performance was not bad at all. We are going to work on that and certainly, it is a thing that is worrisome (lack of concentration). We still have two or three days to work on that and we will certainly do that before our first game in the Federation Cup.
Next matches
“I think all along we have been playing against lower league teams which we based our assessment on before today’s game. But today’s game has proved us wrong that we still have some areas to improve on.
“The grade A game against Rivers United exposed us to the deficiency in the team and we are going to work on that."
He also blamed match rustiness for his players' lacklustre performance against Stanley Eguma’s men because of their lack of competitive matches with their last game played in the league close to three months ago.
“Match rustiness was also evident among my players and it is natural because we have not been involved in any game competitive match for about three months now and it certainly showed in the game,” he continued.
“We are going to work on the lapses we noticed against Rivers United before our first game in the Federation Cup. We want to do our very best to give a good account of ourselves in the competition.”
