Birmingham City taught a lesson

ABC Motsepe League newcomers Birmingham City were hammered 4-1 by Amavarara at the North End Stadium in East London over the weekend.

This undesired result marked City’s third loss in the third-tier league after gaining promotion from SAB League alongside Amavarara from Komani. On the other hand the Komanibased outfit has done well in their maiden season as they have won all three games they have played so far and now have nine points.

Hence Amavarava coach, Archibald Mzimkhulu Dyeli was impressed with the way his charges began their campaign, although he acknowledged it was still early days in the competition, and he was also not happy with the careless mistakes committed by his boys.

“We gave the opponents a gift of a goal in the first half because that was not supposed to have been a goal, but unfortunately the goalkeeper miscalculated the ball and it ended at the back of the net.

“And I’m very disappointed about that because we could have kept a clean sheet again today,” said Dyeli.

He said he was not happy with the way his boys performed during the game, but he would take the three points, and he emphasised the need to strengthen his defence.

“They did well to collect the maximum points, which was what we came here for.

“And they should know we are going to take each game at a time and plan every time because we’d love to see ourselves closing the league in the top three teams.”

Dyeli continued, “The way we defended today. We were very poor, more especially in the first half and early in the second half. Because early in the second half we were breached more than once and that’s very rare for us,”

City coach Victor Gomeni didn’t take the loss to heart as he acknowledged that his boys were still trying to find their feet in the Motsepe league after campaigning in the SAB League for more than three seasons.

“The opposition was better than us so we have to go back to the drawing board and fix our mistakes because our defence failed us today.

“If you check our centre back department they were not pulling their weight and that costs too much,” said Gomeni.

Other results: Peacemakers 1 Matta Milan 1, Tornado 0 Butterworth 0, Bush Bucks Academy 0 Swartkops Valley United Brothers 1, Future Tigers 0 Sibanye 0, Mthatha Bucks 1 Yakha United 2, P E Stars 2 The Guys 0, Bizana Pondo 3 Highbury 0.

They did well to collect the maximum points, which was what we came here for