After registering back-to-back victories in the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Premier League, Shabana FC head coach Peter Okidi has sounded a warning to title chasing rivals that their ambition is to haul maximum points from every game on their way to be crowned champions.
The Kisii-based Glamour Boys are currently sitting top of the 18 team league table with six maximum points from two matches. They started off their season with a 4-2 home win against promoted side APS Bomet.
Their matchday two fixture took them to Mombasa where last season they had come from a goal down to secure a 1-1 draw. Shabana looked the better side against the Dockers and they had to wait until the second half when striker Brian Michira scored what turned out to be the winner.
Shabana's target is to win 2025-26 Premier League crown
According to Okidi, who joined Shabana in January and guided them to fifth place finish in the previous season, the team’s main focus is to take it a game at time with focus on collecting maximum points.
“Even the bible says if you work hard, you reap big from your sweat, so we worked very hard ahead of the Bandari game, and we ended up collecting maximum points from the difficult away game, but the shift we put during training sessions rewarded us with the vital points,” Okidi told Flashscore.
“Our message goes to the fans, we want them to keep praying for us, our target is to achieve the target that we set before the season started. This year, Shabana must win the title, we must go with the Premier League title. For us, that is the focus and we are not going to track back, but will keep pushing forward.”
He added: “This season, we said if we want to win the league, we must win all the matches that we dropped points last season, when we played against Bandari last season, we dropped two points, so it was a must for us to make amends, and take three points, to attain the target of collecting points from teams that denied us points last season.
“For us we have a plan (to win the league), and we have a game plan, and in each game we want to win, and so it is not a surprise that we managed to beat Bandari, we had worked for that and we knew we were coming to beat them and take home the three points on offer.”
Shabana want another three points from Tusker
Ahead of their matchday three fixture against Tusker, who have lost their opening two matches, a confident Okidi said: “We are facing Tusker in our next fixture, they are next in our plan, we are going back home to work more harder, we are done with Bandari, focus shifts to Tusker, and we want another three points from them.”
On his team conceding two goals in the opening fixture against Bomet, Okidi responded: “Every game for us is to work hard for a win, if you look at the last game, we scored four goals but conceded and it was disappointing we couldn’t keep a clean sheet.
“We have talked to the players about it, and we need to go back and rectify a few mistakes (we have picked out from previous matches), because as a team, we want to do better than we have done in the last two matches.”
Last season, Shabana finished with 53 points from 34 matches, 12 fewer than champions Kenya Police FC.
