Slump weighs heavy in Chilli Boys camp

AS THE first half of the Premier Soccer League season draws to a close with only one game remaining, Chippa United coach Dan “Dance” Malesela’s aim is to improve his team’s position on the log.

The Chilli Boys play struggling Ajax Cape Town away tomorrow before they break for Christmas.

Chippa have endured a bittersweet first half of their league campaign this season.

After a good start to the season in winning their first two matches, the Port Elizabeth side struggled to find the winning combination going seven games without a win.

They finally broke that winless streak when they beat Kaizer Chiefs 3-1 at Nelson Mandela Stadium early this month but failed to keep the momentum and lost to 1-0 to Polokwane City last week.

However, Chippa bounced back from that to beat Highlands Park 2-0 at the Sisa Dukashe Stadium in East London on the weekend.

“It has been a bit of a testing campaign, a challenging one but we have set ourselves to say look let’s prioritise.

“We now find ourselves on the other side of the log and what is the priority?

“The priority should be to move away from the bottom, not to think about chasing targets or to think about a position,” he said.

“We have had a slight change to our approach because in the beginning, to be honest, we were a bit confident that we will probably glide with the league and all of that.

“Now we have found ourselves in a bit of a slump, so we must look at where we are and what is reasonable.”

His first priority he says is moving away from the bottom of the log.

“As soon as that is done then we will move to another step and say what do we do now.

“Do we want to consolidate or do we want to go further up so we are taking it step by step,” said Malesela.

The Chilli Boys are now 10th on the log with 16 points from 13 games.