Chiefs coach not expecting miracles from new signings

Chiefs signed James Kotei, Samir Nurkovic, Kearyn Baccus and Lazarous Kambole during the current transfer window as they look to end their silverware drought.

“I’ve said it several critical times in preparing for this season, let’s not go and talk about the new players. For us, of course it’s not mentioned very often, we have players like Itu Khune injured since January,” Middendorp told reporters.

“There’s no doubt Khune is the number-one, he’s so influential when organisation and leadership is needed. We have Erick Mathoho, I don’t think I need to explain his value if he’s at 100 percent level in terms of defensive work and if you have set-plays up front.

“We have Rama (Maphlele) – we’ve seen it, even though he was with the national team, he was not really capable of coming back during the past four or five months to end the season (strongly),” added Middendorp.

“We have Lebogang Manyama, we have Happy (Mashiane) and some other players, Nkosi Ngcobo. These are for me and us the main priority, let’s not talk about the new players but the main priority is to get these players to the maximum level of performance.

“So, we’re talking about four to six players [coming back from injury], who will make up the starting XI, plus adding the players coming from outside, and this is what we followed up during the break,” concluded the Chiefs coach.

Chiefs lost 2-0 to rivals Orlando Pirates in the Carling Black Label Cup at FNB Stadium this past weekend.

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