Rivers United technical manager, Stanley Eguma says it will be ‘foolish’ to start talking about his side and a title push at this stage of the season.
United defeated the bottom club, Adamawa United 1-0 on Sunday to move to the top of the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) standings having amassed 15 points from a possible 21.
With 31 more games still to navigate until the end of the season, Eguma thinks it will be nothing short of premature to start seeing his side as champions in waiting.
“I have heard some persons say Rivers United will win the league title this season but to start thinking this way so early in the season will be foolish,” Eguma told SPNAfricaNews. “Yes, the objective for Rivers United is always to win any competition we go into but there are so many good teams in the league and these are still early days.
“We will continue to take it game by game and strive to win all the time. At the end of the season, we will see where that takes us.
“The idea is to try to win the league at the end of the day ofcourse but we can’t start thinking too much about that now.”
United were a pale imitation of their aesthetic and usual free flowing best against the basement club on Sunday as they laboured to a slim 1-0 loss – the only time they had scored just once at home since their opening day victory over Rangers International.
Eguma revealed that the rigours of too many road trips to fulfil their fixture obligations in the NPFL have left more than a few key dramatis personae lacking sharpness.
“We didn’t have a very good game (against Adamawa United on Sunday,” he admitted. “I’ll attribute it to the amount of travels we have had to make recently.
“That has affected the fitness of a lot of our players. I can see a little bit of fatigue showing in the team.
“We made a lot of changes in the team on Sunday but we still did not play up to our usual standards.
“I however think this is just a temporary setback and we will try to correct the loopholes we have noticed ahead of subsequent matches.”
