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Rivers United Football Club on Sunday disclosed that they disagree with the League Management Company (LMC) on the 2019/20 Nigeria Professional Football League final table.
The Portharcourt-based club disclosed this through the Club’s General Manager Okey Kpalakwu, who in a statement insisted that the club was the team that finished 2nd at the end of the season.
“The NPFL final table circulated in the media space placed Plateau United, Enyimba and Rivers United in the first, second, and third places respectively”.
“In that table, Rivers United and Enyimba were tied on the same number of points”.
“But a totally strange/inconclusive head-to-head consideration, affected by the same force majeure, was used to place Enyimba in the second position”.
“Nothing can be further from the truth, because such consideration can only exist in the imagination of those peddling the fake table”.
“For emphasis and to inform discerning members of the public, we have what is internationally known and even in the rule books of LMC”.
“This indicates that points are the first basis of separating teams, followed by goal difference, before head-to-head,” he said.
According to Kpalakwu, the Points Per Game (PPG) model adopted by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and LMC is a straight-forward co-efficient. He said this is a way of dividing the total number of points with the total number of matches played as at the time the league was suspended.
“This is in order to guarantee fairness to clubs that played less number of matches.
“With the application of PPG, all teams are now measured equally, erasing the scenario of whether or not any club played a higher number of matches than the other,” He added.
Mr. Kpalakwu argued that separating the tie by goal difference was to divide the number of goals scored by the number of matches played to arrive at a co-efficient.
He emphasized that based on this, it was obvious that Rivers United were the second-placed team and no amount of false narratives would deceive those who should know.
“We have already made our position known to the NFF and LMC and we expect that justice will be served without fear or favor”.
He, however, warned that the Port Harcourt based club may be forced to table formal petitions to the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA), the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the Court of Arbitration in Sports (CAS) to ventilate their grievances and press for justice.”
