WE PLAYED BADLY IN ADDIS ABABA -SIASIA

Super Eagles' Head Coach, Samson Siasia, has admitted that his team committed too many blunders in the 2-2 draw with Ethiopia in the last Sunday's 2012 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier in Addis Ababa.

'It was a bad performance from the players. We committed too many mistakes in the midfield with players bumping into one another and even in defence, we did badly,' Siasia said.

The Nigerian manager also attributed the belaboured display of the Super Eagles to jetlag, saying that the travelling plan, which was supposed to last four hours, claimed an additional three hours, leaving the players with little time to rest before the game.

'Our travelling plans were poor and we took seven hours to get here. So, the players got there jetlagged but that's not enough excuse for us to play badly,' the former coach of Nigeria's Under-20 and Under-23 teams said.

It was learnt that the travelling plan of the Super Eagles saw the team being flown through Lagos to Entebbe in Uganda where they had a one-hour stop-over before proceeding to Addis Ababa.

Nigeria is now three points behind Group B leaders, Guinea, who has 10 points after defeating Madagascar 4-1 in Conakry on Sunday.

The Super Eagles' next game will come up in Antananarivo against Madagascar in September before they play host to the Guineans later in the year.

Samson Siasia also admitted that Eagles were luck to come away with a draw from Sunday's 2012 African Nations Cup qualifier against Ethiopia. ??Joseph Yobo scored a late game-tying goal as the Super Eagles struggled to hit the heights of their previous performances under Siasia.??'We were lucky to get a draw,' Siasia conceded. 'We didn't play like we normally do and we paid for it.??'Tactically we didn't do very well, we were very sluggish and did not pass the ball with our normal sharpness.??'We could have lost and I don't think we could have argued with that.'??The Ethiopians launched long balls at the Nigeria defence which the visitors struggled to cope with and Siasia conceded that it was a problem.??'These guys played long balls and we struggled to handle it.

It was a very difficult game, with the altitude, tiredness from the trip and so on.'??But Siasia commended his players for showing character to get at least a point.??'Sometimes when things are not going your way, it is easy for players to lose their composure. But we kept pushing and teh boys showed a lot of character.'??Yobo, who scored the final goal, said that if the game had gone on a bit longer, the Eagles, who by then appeared to have found their rhythm, would have won it.??'With the way we played in the last few minutes, if the game had gone on for another five minutes, we would have scored the winning goal.'