Abahani want to fortify frontline in second-leg
Emeka alraedy joins Dhanmondi based club to play in second-phase
Sports Reporter
Holders Abahani Limited in their bid to defend will begin the second phase with a new combination in their front line when they will bring a change in the striking zone. Abahani, eyeing to retain the title, they had a bit struggling time up to the midway of the first-leg and bounced back strongly to recover the discrepancy and finished the leg with only two points behind to the league leaders Chittagong Abahani Limited.
Abahani Limited concluded the first leg with 24 points along with the another strong contenders of the Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club when they (Abahani) won seven matches, drew three and suffered one defeat.
Abahani in their first leg not looked steady, as they had to struggle in most of the matches to survive and scoring goal were not up to the mark while they scored only15 goals in 11 matches, which is not inspiring and certainly very poor for a champions team.
In fact in the scoring line of Abahani showed very poor display when they squandered plenty of chances which came to their ways in every match, strikers looked very shaky not to mark the target from the edge of the area.
However, in the second leg they dont want to repeat the missing trail of scoring goals as in the first leg it was happened very often, when teams manager Sattyajit Das Rupu while talking to this correspondent on Monday said We did a lot of miss in the first phase and this time we will have to very cautious in the second leg and I think we will not have so many options will be left for us in the second leg to regain any drawback.
All the teams would be very vigilant in the second leg for upgrading their position, so every team will make afresh start and will throw huge challenge, so we will have a strong scoring zone to make win matches, said Rupu.
I think the second leg is the championship decider phase, so there would be limited chances will come to score and we will have to make maximum utilize of limited opportunities. If you were watchful in the first leg, I can say, we created so many chances, none of the teams could produce so many chances.
The good news is that Sunday, who was the highest scorer in the last leg and played a vital role of Abahanis title win, joined the teams practice last week but the concern is that how much he is fit, Rupu said, Sunday joined the team on October 27 and have been practicing with the team for last few days. We are watching his fitness level, if he would be okay then we will take decision about him.
Abahani have Samad Yusif, Emeka Darlington and Landing are in the foreign quota, now if they would include Sunday then they will have to release one of them and Rupu said, We have one week time in hands to take decision.
Abahani will submit their players list on November 10 after the return home of manager Rupu from India.
Meanwhile, Abahani played a practice match against Muktijoddha Sangsad Krira Chakra and made a goalless draw at their ground following a 5-0 win against Brothers Union last week when Sunday scored one goal.
