‘No crocodile tears’ after Lion’s mauling

EC BEES coach Chippa Njedu has admitted defeat following their embarrassing 6-1 loss at the hands of Lion City at NU2 Stadium in Motherwell, Port Elizabeth.

This was the Bees’ second loss this season after they were beaten 3-2 by Mthatha City in a highly contested clash at Mthatha Stadium last month.

The PE-based outfit scored a freekick right after the Bees opened the scoring in the first 10 minutes into the first half. The hosts bounced back after the break to score five more.

Bees will go into a break with 24 points and will remain at third spot for the time being, with Lion City having climbed to 10th spot and now with 13 points.

“When you lose a game you must not defend yourself, because if you do that it will seem like you are a sore loser that gets lucky all the time. So we lost and there’s nothing to defend,” said Njedu.

He said playing in the Nedbank Cup can have consequences such as their loss but they will go into the break with clear heads.

“When you have a game in hand – those are not points and if you check the space between the games we played.

“We play on Saturday and then we play again on Tuesday, but I don’t want to attribute our loss to that, but at the end of the day it played a role in the team’s performance.

“You can’t play two games in a space of two days and expect positive results all the time, and the worst part is that we lost to a team that is not doing so great.”

The “Crazy Gang” mentor said he was hopeful they would not concede any more goals when both sides went to halftime with a goal each.

“When we came back from the break City scored five more goals and that kind of demotivated our guys a little.

“Some of my players were not playing such as captain George Gawe including others who had injuries, but I don’t want to get into that because as a coach you should trust all your players. You can’t say ‘hey if so and so was on the pitch the result would be different today’, because that could affect them.”

Njedu said their biggest weakness was letting in soft goals which made them lose concentration. “We scored first and the opponents scored their first goal through a penalty, then they came back to score a free-kick ... that game was not easy at all. This is nothing to worry about it’s just that we are down for now because we’re not used to losing like this.

“We’re still going to play in the first round of the season, so it’s a matter of letting the boys go to their holidays.

“Now we are going to release them for Christmas holidays and when we come back again next year we’ll pickup where we left off.”

Njedu said it was important to learn from their past mistakes and to make sure they focus on winning every game next year.