Lagos Derby: Ikorodu United Coach Reacts To His Side's 3-1 Defeat

Following their 3-1 loss at the Agege stadium on Sunday, Ikorodu United new coach, Theodorus Jacob de Jong, has admitted that the Oga Boys still has so much work to do in the Nigeria Professional Football League.

The Dutch-man said his boys did well in the first half, but their second half performance dropped, due to their physical imbalance, which he will work on in his subsequent trainings ahead of their remaining games.

The Onikan outfit remain 19th on the log with about 11 games to go in the season,

"The game in the first half was quite okay from both sides. Especially from our side, but in the second half our physical condition went down, we don't have the ball to us anymore because of circumstances in the last two weeks, there's a lot of pressure on the new players that came in, after then we had accident, close to 15 players could not train and this is the impact on the team."

"The new players I don't know where they came from, what kind of physical condition they have, which club did they play and which one they didn't play, so, at the moment we have lack of good physical condition."

"When you have good physical condition, you can play this game easily, so after 55-60 minutes, out level was totally going down, and then we had to run after the opponent, despite getting a chance for 2-1- an across from Dede, Uche missed almost an empty goal, but they got a chance after our miss and they converted their chance to lead 2-1."

De Jong also criticised the centre referee for awarding the last minute penalty to the home side which extended the goal  margin to 3-1.

He further said he was disappointed with the scoreline, adding that he doesn't like to lose, but obviously, he will correct all these errors as the season winds down.

"And then lastly, the referee think it's Christmas time and he gave a penalty to the opponent, but it's okay, he can do it, it's his choice."

"Ofcourse I was disappointed and it is also disappointing for everyone because I hate losing, but it's okay, it belongs to the sport that you don't have to play the game when you cannot have this."

"So Wednesday again is another important game and then we can get a revenge for this."

"I've watched MFM two times and they are quite a good team with some good players, they are in full physical condition and they had to wait to their own time to get it, but at this level, I will only say we are 50 percent fit."

"We'll fight for it, that's the only thing I can say, we'll fight for it and at the end of the season, we will see where we end hopefully not in the relegation where we drop down, but we have to chill, we have to play, and we have to win, that's it."

Paul Duke: "Well, as the coach said, we'll keep working hard and we'll keep doing our best and see where. We go from there, but I think as a team, we'll still keep fighting and giving all our best in anyway we can, so that we'll be able to come out from the position we are right now."

"Ahead of our next game, I believe we'll keep fighting and hopefully at the end of the day, we'll come out with a good result. IfeanyUbah is a good team, I watched them earlier in the season, they play good football, and I hope that on Wednesday we'll come out good."

"Well, we have good players right now, we are playing as a team and giving all our best, that's all I can say right now, but I hope that we will do more individually, as a team also, because we have some new players among us which we haven't played together as a team yet, hopefully on Wednesday we will play as one team and come out with the result that we need."