POT IS CALLING KETTLE BLACK IN NIGERIAN LEAGUE

By Sunday Agunbiade

Dear esteemed readers, our attention has been drawn to a lot of crocodile tears making the rounds on the socio media calling the league organisers to beam their searchlight at various centers of the final Match day 38 of NPFL

Well, as much as I vehemently detest a match fixing, region collaboration, and money exchange hands in the game of football, I would never be a party to any persons, agents or authour of such piece that is putting unnecessary pressure on *LMC and NRA*for the job they have been doing well.

The way our league is structured shows that every team is given a level playing ground of 38 matches to battle with.

To put it in clearer view, every team has 38 matches to contend with,19 home matches and the remaining 19 matches to be played on the road with the same kilometres of travelling distances. Some teams used the opportunity of away matches to feature their average players that should have come after they might have won a match. This single purposeless act gave a lot of problems to the so called big teams losing cheap matches(just imagine a team changing a minimum of 5 players per match and left their brilliant players on the bench. Haba!) (did you see Gernot Rohr change his winning team in the double legged against Cameroon?) Gernot Rohr simply played a game of purpose knowing what is at stake.

To my colleagues, this is a fact we should tell our club managers to enable them get the needed results so that they would not hide under any untenable excuse for not performing with our tax payers money.

Take for instance, as I speak, 10 NPFL teams are presently on subvention below *#10M* and  some of them are still at the top 10 on the table because they simply cut their coat according to their sizes (they cut their Over blotted players and stop unecessary PR to their media agent to sustain their jobs). Ask MFM, AKWA, NASARAWA ABS and the likes. I stand to be quoted, *Coach Fidelis Illechukwu of MFM*and *Coach Abdumaikaba of AKWA United* have never given it a second thought to buy a match even though I don't know any that has ever bought. *Paul Bassey is a man of principle ditto MFM team manager, *Sunday Ojeh*

Sincerely, *LMC and NRA* have no doubt recorded a huge success in the last 37 matches and regardless of what happens on the Match day 38 of NPFL, it has no inkling of dent to the enviable record made by  both *MALLAM SHEU DIKKO* and *ALHAJI TADE AZEEZ* in Nigerian league. The league has really improved beyond rhetorics and surpassed its previous status as available records show that a lot of teams in the southern parts of the country have won in the far north (MFM, SUNSHINE,ABS) while some northern teams got the three maximum points in the South west and South South regions(ELKANEMI, NASARAWA, KANO PILLARS, WIKKI TOURISTS and the likes)

Many referees without adequate security lost their whistle in the course of the season while some of the home teams that are crying now have benefitted from the charged atmosphere created by their *"rented "touts" or * toughs* to get the three maximum points from the innocent referees.

Hnmmn, t's high time we stopped praising inefficient coaches, club management and certain individuals that are doing poorly on the league and let's do everything within our means to push them to work with constructive and productive criticism that would make them get the needed results to their teeming fans. Remember that their team is not the only team that are playing on the league and they should emulate the leading flight or the topping teams.

Some of us are presenting our administrators and coaches to our listeners in a way that suggests that they are helping us. No, they are not. We  should let them realise that they are not helping us but they are doing what they are being paid for. After all, they are feeding on tax payers money and must give us results or resign if they are not comfortable with the available means.

I want to conclude that the day we journalists stop praise singing these so called inefficient management and coaches on the basis of PR, is the day we would start seeing capable teams representing Nigeria on the continent.