An exciting season, but plenty of negatives

It was an exciting Absa Premiership season from the very start up until the end – at the top, in the top eight race and in the relegation battle. It was good to see several teams fighting for the championship at different stages of the season.

At some point we had Kaizer Chiefs and SuperSport United at the top, Cape Town City were lingering there as well, and it was very encouraging to see a high level of competition on all fronts.

In the middle of the table, the margin was very close, and when you look at the bottom, it was equally as close. It was indeed an exciting season in terms of the overall performances.

What we have to look at now is the quality of football that is being displayed.

Yes, some of the teams managed to grind out results, which is good in terms of gathering points, but we were not given much quality football. I hope that next season we will have this competitiveness, and at the same time see the quality on the pitch.

Another downside is the top goalscorer, taking nothing away from Lebogang Manyama, but the tally has been below standard, again. The number of goals scored has been disappointing for quite a number of seasons. It is not a good reflection on the state of our football.

This is a department where we really need to look into and find strategies to improve. Manyama is not an outright striker and it is good for midfielders to score a substantial amount of goals. They are putting pressure on our strikers to do much better.

We normally use the Spanish La Liga and English Premier League as benchmarks in terms of our scoring abilities.

Considering how Tendai Ndoro started, we were expecting him to go all the way and surpass the 20-goal mark, but he faded away, which is the disappointing part. This should be a lesson for our players that we have been sitting in this position for quite a long time. They should be motivated to try and break this disappointing spell of a poor return of goals.

It is sad to see this, especially with the competitiveness level moving up a gear. I was expecting strikers to up their game a bit.

That was not the most disappointing part of the season, though. What let the footballing nation down was when fans invaded the pitch at Loftus Versfeld in a match between Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates.

There was a supporter who was badly injured after he was beaten up and could have easily lost his life. That is not what we want to see in our football.

We know football is a game of emotions, but people need to accept defeat irrespective of how it comes. Whether it is a big score or not, we need to accept it.

Orlando Pirates did not do as well as one would have expected. For them to miss out of the top eight fell very short on my expectations. They did not come to the party, but other than that, one has to accept that it was not their season. They still have a chance to restore the pride of the club, but they are going up against an equally disappointed team in SuperSport in the Nedbank Cup final.

It is really going to be a difficult game between the two teams, and the winner of the trophy will become a big winner, while at the same time, the loser will become a big loser this season, because both teams did not have a particularly good campaign.