Enyimba: Navigating the Unfamiliar

Good morning Everyone,

In the summer of 2014, I decided to start ThatEnyimbaFan blog. The goal was simple – wake up everyday and write a post about the team. This was in Kadiri Ikhana’s last stint as Enyimba manager. Chinedu Udoji was captain and Nzube Anaezemba was my favorite player on the team.

The first challenge was, Can I be consistent? Can I wake up everyday with the same fervor and drive to write? It was a personal challenge and for 2 years, I did consistently. Until when I was no longer close to the team, I wasn’t watching matches and i couldn’t interview players because I had traveled away for my Masters.

I’m not trying to fluff up words to make up my word count, so please stay with me. The second challenge was, can I find juice to talk about every morning? On days when Giwa had sued NFF at the Jos Courts and the League had been suspended indefinitely, could I still find what to write about daily? Again that was a challenge and over it, I gratefully excelled.

All of those were helped by the fact that Enyimba has always been a winning team. Every season we would challenge for places and trophies. We were always in the Continent and we always had great players. It has always been our tradition.

The other reason is the fact that for all his faults, FAA as the club administrator genuinely loved the club and he did all he could do to make the club win. He didn’t care what tribe a player was, if he could guarantee us that edge, FAA made sure to bring him. Him and Jude, and this is not excusing their occasional madness, believed that success for the team will produce success for their own careers. Brilliant, in my opinion.

Onto my theme for today then, we are in very unfamiliar terrain. Both as a club and as a blog. We have never gone 10 matches in the season without a win- as far as my memory serves me. I grew up on the streets of Aba and Enyimba always were head and shoulders above every other team in the land. So, we can rant all we want about what’s going on but if conversations aren’t channeled toward resolving the problem, we are in for a long season.

Frank conversations are expedient between the technical crew and management with regards to performance, results and the technical ability of the team. You can try but You can’t polish a pebble into a diamond; some things are inherently limited by their nature. The technical input from the team needs upgrading.

Sunday is behind us just as every other result of the recent past. What we do from this point is what matters. Hopefully the current management have the ability to steer us out of this mire.

Back tomorrow.

‘EnyimbaEnyi