Player and style tendencies

Of the stats we can use to look at how one coach compares to another is how often his side crosses the ball. Baxter preferred a transition or counterattack-focused set-up where his Chiefs side were quite direct and didn’t look for balls into the box. The ex-Bafana Bafana coach also didn’t have many wingers at his disposal that he trusted, so spamming deliveries from wide wouldn’t have made sense. The stats show Amakhosi averaged 11 crosses per game under Baxter compared to 20 per game under Hunt. Zwane’s side are somewhere between that with 13 deliveries per game. However, the first four fixtures saw just 29 crosses (7.25 per game). The next six games saw 16.13 crosses per match because Kgaogelo Sekgota came into the side and gave a genuine outlet on the flanks. Baxter only gave Sekgota 448 minutes in the whole of last season in all competitions vs 1,084 minutes this season. Cole Alexander has only played 37 minutes in the league in the last 10 matches. Last term, he played under Baxter whenever fit and even kept his place for plenty of minutes under Zwane. The arrival of Yusuf Maart and of Dillan Solomons (allowing Njabulo Blom to return to a defensive midfield role) has been key in moving away from Alexander. And then you have Mathoho’s complete drop from the first-choice centre-back to basically fifth in the pecking order! There are still quite big question marks for Zwane in some positions as he tries to find his best XI. He appears to be getting closer in recent weeks with Blom, Maart and Dolly filling three spots and Nkosingiphile Ngcobo coming back into favour in midfield. We’ve seen hard runners like Siyethemba Sithebe play less often since Blom began providing defensive cover for Maart. The backline remains a question mark, but recent matches have seen Njabulo Ngcobo play much less after some questionable performances. It feels like January should see a more settled side and a clearer team selection hierarchy as players waste opportunities to stake their claim or simply aren’t in the plans (like Austin Dube and Happy Mashiane).