Management should have ‘bought’ some of our matches – Essien

Bechem United winger Peter Essien has launched an astonishing attack on his club’s management, accusing the club of failing to ‘buy’ some of its matches to aid survival.

In an interview with Takoradi-based Skyy FM, Essien, who could land in hot waters for his comments, said the club’s management left the burden of trying to stay in the Premier Division to the players.

‘Sometimes the management has to ‘play’ some of the matches for us. They should have ‘bought’ some matches for us to survive, but they didn’t. They left us to do all the work.’

Essien also told Skyy FM that sometimes the players would travel to certain matches expecting the club’s hierarchy to have ‘bought’ the matches, but they would get there only to discover that nothing of the sort had been done, citing the last game against New Edubiase United as an example.

‘Sometimes we would travel with the assurance that the game we are going to be playing in has been ‘bought’ but we get there only to find out that that is not the case. For example, in Bekwai, at half time, when we heard that Arsenal were losing 0-3 to Hearts in Accra, we went to the New Edubiase United chairman (Yakubu) to plead so that he gives us the match. Our chairman also came to beg and Yakubu then asked him whether that was the right place to conduct such negotiations. That is when we realized that our management had not done any preparations in that regard. Meanwhile we all thought the match had been bought. If our management had done something earlier, New Edubiase United would have agreed to give the match to us.’

Essien noted that because the club has suffered from bad refereeing decisions, the club’s management should have sorted out the referees.

‘We had several decisions going against us in both home and away matches and so our management should have given some of the referees some money. but they failed to 'see' the referees in either home or away matches and that cost us.'