By Rasaq Oboirien
FIDELIS Ilechukwu has admitted his Mountain of Fire FC side will miss the Nigeria Premier League (NPL) Lagos Derby against Ikorodu United, reports NaijaSportsXtra.blogspot.com.
Recall last season, the Olukoya Boys took 4points from the game drawing the first leg at the Onikan and claimed the Lagos bragging right in the reverse fixture at the Agege Stadium.
"We'll miss Ikorodu United, as last season's Lagos Derby was a tough. It gave me a checks and balance of my team too.
"I feel not understanding the league affected them too as they used grass-root players. I saw their training methods and watched some of games on television, they were too good to have relegated.
"But you can't fight the heavens as they a great team, seeing them drop to the lower division was sad."
On his plans for the upcoming season, the 'Working One' stated: "Our target is to retain our NPL status, however, we will give it our best shot once we are within reach of either winning the league or Federation Cup.
"My assistants and I, just want to have a team that's in good shape as one thing we have noticed is that the country's domestic league is very tough. The true performance of any team is assessed as from the second stanza of the season.
"More so, using grass-root players to execute the league was never an easy task too.
"One or two bitter lesson we learnt last season when we started well, later found ourselves fighting to escape relegation."
The Olukoya Boys escaped relegation winning their last game of the season against FC Ifeanyi Ubah.
