Rivers United captain, Festus Austin has urged players of the club not to get carried away as they look to win the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) title at the first time of asking.
\nUnited is currently top of the NPFL standings with three matches remaining and the \u2018Pride of Rivers\u2019 know they are within striking distance of an improbable title.
\nThe captain however concedes that it will be extremely premature to start singing the victory tunes with three potentially difficult fixtures still to navigate.
\n\u201cNobody (at Rivers United) should even start thinking of celebrating because it is too early for that kind of thing.
\n\u201cIf you take a closer look at the NPFL table, you will realise that there are four or even five clubs that are capable of winning the title.
\n\u201cAt this stage of the season, calm heads, disciplined individuals and consistent levels of hard work are required,\u201d he told newsmen.
\nUnited will embark on a banana skin trip to Bauchi to face Wikki Tourists on Sunday, of the table, in their next league game, a side that previously spent 63 days at the top knowing that defeat could sound the death knell on their title aspirations.
\nThe Port Harcourt side, in stark contrast, have spent just 18 days cumulatively, as the top dogs of the division.
\nStatistics aside, Austin anticipates an extremely difficult test against the Tourists especially putting United\u2019s shocking form away from home in perspective, as they have failed to score on their travels in their last nine attempts.
\nThe last time Rivers United avoided defeat away from home was three months ago (June 9) when they drew 0-0 at champions, Enyimba and Austin knows improvements are required.
\n\u201cWe have not been getting good results on the road in recent matches.
\n\u201cIt is not like we played badly in all those matches but the truth is, football is a game decided by goals and I will not use this medium to make excuses.
\n\u201cThe fans want us to start performing from this Sunday\u2019s game against Wikki and that is what we will try to do against one of the best sides in the league,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rivers United captain, Festus Austin has urged players of the club not to get carried away as they look to win the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) title at the first time of asking. United is currently top of the NPFL standings with three matches remaining and the \u2018Pride of Rivers\u2019 know they are within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,26,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-front-pix","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/136237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}