Poor pre-season cost us, admits Bechem United boss

Bechem United have identified poor pre-season preparations as the reason for their slow start to this season's Ghana Premier League campaign.

Despite finishing among the top four on two consecutive seasons, the Bechem-based side is languishing at the drop zone, raising concerns over their ability to remain consistent as top four contenders in the country.

However, Kingsley Owusu Achau, the chairman of the club, told Graphic Sports in an interview that they have identified the problems that resulted in their poor start to the season, and they were on the path to recovery.

He explained that because they had agreed to play a pre-season tournament with the elite clubs from the Brong Ahafo Region they could not travel south to Accra to play as they often did during their preseason preparations.

Unfortunately, they were disappointed when the regional tournament was cancelled forcing them to play preseason games with the same third division club multiple times to warm up ahead of the start of their league campaign.

This way of preparation, he said, didn't help the team to adequately assess their strength and readiness for the season as the stamina level of most of their players were exposed when the league started.

According to him, most of their players became sluggish and fatigued after 60 minutes of each match leading to them conceding most of their goals after that time.

He admitted that the team had no reason to under-perform as most of their squad from the previous season were maintained with the exception of Hafiz Konkoni and Kofi Agbesima while the return of two of their players, Augustine Okra and Osei Kuffour who went to seek greener pastures outside, had strengthened the team and shouldn’t perform abysmally.

He asked the fans to remain calm as things would be normalised soon and the team would soon return to winning ways, while promising that they would definitely be among the top four clubs by the close of the season.

''We're improving day by day and we'll still play the Top 4. We are very optimistic and that's our target,” he gave the assurance.