RATTLED AMAKHOSI WILL BOUNCE BACK – KOMPHELA ‘We made it easy for Wits’
LOSING the first game of the season is never really a train smash, but it’s how you lose that often sets off alarm bells.
In their 2-1 defeat to Bidvest Wits on Tuesday night, Kaizer Chiefs never looked like a team that could go on to mount a championship challenge.
It was a team that seemed to lack any real sense of drive, purpose or conviction.
Coach Steve Komphela admitted that they looked desperate and made things easy for Wits, but he is not reading too much into the defeat as he believes Amakhosi can bounce back.
“When we defended, we looked desperate. As a result we could not play from the back. We need to be calm. We played the ball long. One man who showed that if we kept the ball on the ground something could have happened is Twala (William). He had a field day on the left. We made it easy for them,” said Komphela.
“It’s disappointing. We were reluctant to impose our game plan. Wits played with more purpose than we did and they looked more aggressive than we did. We need to accept that we deserved to lose, but You do not win the league through the first match.”
Komphela explained his bizarre decision not to have most of his new signings in the team for the opening match.
Chiefs brought in 10 new players during the off season, including two from their development squad, but only three of them made the 18-man match-day squad.
There was very little change from last season but the impression they had created is that they meant to make big changes this season.
“I thought the team had been training extremely well. It is the same team that played extremely well in the Carling Black Label Cup,” Komphela said, strangely overlooking the fact that the line-up for that competition was picked by fans.
Chiefs have a chance to get their first victory of the season when they visit the Mother City to face Cape Town City in the MTN8 tomorrow (8pm).