Niger Tornadoes shot up to second place on the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) log with a slim win over MFM on Sunday at the Bako Kontagora Stadium in Minna.

The Matchday 19 fixture didn’t exactly set anything on fire but there were enough flakes for one to feast on from a sporting perspective.

Tornadoes looked a different side with Abara making a raft of changes to his line-up but that didn’t stop them from winning the game as they were able to get one over MFM.

In a game of few chances, here are four things we took away from the game that saw Niger Tornadoes extend the unbeaten in the league to nine games.

Abara knows how to blood them in

Niger Tornadoes coach Hamza Abara has proven once again to be a grassroots man and scouting expert by unearthing a new wave of players for the ‘Ikon Allah.’

Abara, who recently won the League Bloggers Awards (LBA), has spent most of his career in grassroots football and he showed he still has it as he scouted the rookie Moses Ugwu, Yahaya Yusuf and Abubakar Ndayebo who scored Tornadoes only goal of the game albeit from the spot.

His ability to blood the youngsters in so early and give them responsibilities within the team has reinforced his stance on giving younger and unknown players a chance to crack it at the big time.

Ndayebo, Ugwu and Yusuf, who all started against MFM showed they could mix it with the big boys there justifying Abara’s confidence in them.

MFM need another Odey

The Olukoya Boys shocked a lot with their beautiful football and scintillating goals last season as coach Fidelis Ilechukwu became the darling of fans across the country.

However, this season seems to be a little bit different as they have found goal-scoring hard to come by.

Against Niger Tornadoes, MFM didn’t create anything of substance in attack save for Abdullahi Suleiman’s horrible miss when one-on-one with Tornadoes goalkeeper Aliko Mustapha.

With Odey’s departure to Switzerland and Sikiru Olatunbosun’s head all over the place, goals haven’t been easy to come by for the Lagos side.

They’ve now failed to score in consecutive games (vs Rangers and Tornadoes) and with Jesse Akila gone, his troubles just went up another notch. Surely Ilechukwu will be scratching his head on how to get them firing again to replicate last season’s form.

Odey’s goals were instrumental to MFM’s incredible run last season and if they are to get anywhere near the top of the table, they certainly need another ‘Odey.’

Read More at: http://npfl.ng/four-takeaways-from-niger-tornadoes-vs-mfm/