Adamu’s absence won’t affect team- Coach Bash

Correspondent: David Kyei, Oseikrom 

1st February 2008

Getting a replacement to fill the vacuum created by the transfer of the man who until his departure to Turkey was an integral part of the success story of Kotoko, Adamu Mohamed, may be the worry of many a Kotoko fan, but the man whose responsibility it is to find the replacement, Bashir Hayford, says there is no cause for alarm.

Having impressed the scouts by his performance in the league, Adamu Mohamed only had to fly out of Ghana for medical examination with Turkish premier division side, Genclerbirligi, immediately the Ghanaian football season was put on hold for the Africa Cup of Nations to take place in the country.

The worry by Kotoko watchers and fans heightened when news broke that the player had had a successful medicals and was therefore going to be signed on by the Turkish side.

Worrying though it may be to fans, Coach Bash says he had a fore-knowledge of teams who were on the heels of the player and so, though featured him regularly in matches, he had other plans.

“First of all, it is a prestigious thing for a coach to see his players make the grade in foreign countries and so I featured him regularly to ensure that he remained in tip-top form ahead of his travel to Europe”

“Moreover, I have devised other strategies that will seek to find a perfect replacement thereby making us not in any way miss the services of the player”.

To this end, the return of the team from their ten day break last Wednesday was an opportunity for him to re-strategise by preparing the replacement he has in mind for the position.

With a full house of players reporting for training, he says he was going to use the period between now and the restart of the league to take the team through various exercises that will bring out the versatility in the players to play.

“Fans should not forget that for every position, we registered three players and so with the absence of Adamu, we still have to options available for the position. What we have to do is to probably find another player when the registration opens to fully compliment our efforts of getting three players per position”.

“Whilst we wait for the first round to end for that to be fulfilled, I will like to assure all that we have right materials to maintain our winning form,” he said.

With training started already, Coach Bash says he is going to use the period between now and the resumption of the premier league to start a holistic preparation that will get the team back into the form that they were in before the league went on recess.

“We have some ten days before honouring the invitation to go to Liberia for the international friendly matches that have been lined up for us. What I intend doing therefore is to bring up their physical condition before doing ball work. All of these will be done before we fly out of the country”.

“Patriots as we are, we will make room for our players to get the chance to watch the nations cup matches whilst they also get the time to go through their full training regimen that we have for them”.

At the time of filling this report on Wednesday, Adamu was billed to play his third consecutive match for his new team in the Turkish league.