Derby win took a lot out of Chiefs

I don’t think it was complacency, I think that coming from the derby, they lacked a bit of energy – playing Pirates probably took so much out of them.

Having said that, I also think it was always going to be difficult coming up against a team that has a new coach, or stand-in coaches in Moeneeb Josephs and Ayanda Dlamini. Whenever players play and are not afraid to make mistakes, they are more effective and are able to take more risks. AmaZulu did that well and won the individual battles against Chiefs. That adds up and filters through to the team battle. Any coach will tell you that if you can win your individual battles on the pitch you will get results and AmaZulu could have scored two or three more goals.

It just didn’t look like the Chiefs of a week before against Pirates, I think they just couldn’t get out of second gear. It is one thing being complacent and another not arriving on the pitch – it was that type of game for Chiefs. I do think it is fair to say Chiefs are having a bit of a wobble, maybe the derby win was more an effort for the fans than anything else. It is fair to say they are in a bit of a slump… they got caught out, and their needs to be a reaction if they want to be champions. This is possibly the most important part of any title race, whether you can finish strong. We have seen Sundowns make a late run and win their previous two titles, so it becomes very important if you want to gain momentum and it looks like Chiefs are losing theirs.

I think it can be good for Chiefs that they are not in the Nedbank Cup, they can take time to recuperate, press the reset button and make a run for it.

As for Wits, Chiefs’ next opponents, I think when they exited the Caf Confederation Cup, everyone was waiting to see them charge for the title. We know what Wits can do, they had so many games in hand and a strong team defensively…it is disappointing that they never took advantage of that, on three occasions they failed when they could have picked up the three points. Going forward, a lot of the title-chasers are playing each other.

Sundowns also still have to play Wits, Chiefs still have to play Wits twice, Pirates also still have to play Wits, a team that takes advantage and can take six points from two games in a row, which could disturb Chiefs.

It was very disappointing for Sundowns to go out of the Caf Champions League, but conceding two goals in Cairo and not scoring away in the first leg is where they lost the encounter. It makes it so much more difficult, because now you are facing a team in Al-Ahly whose success is built on a strong defence.

The moment you come out and attack them you will get burned and that is what happened in the second leg. We were still hoping Sundowns would have the quality to overcome Al-Ahly in Tshwane but this Al-Ahly side have improved tremendously from the last time they came here. Now they were not taking Sundowns for granted, teams know how serious Sundowns are now in the Champions League.

What makes the situation exciting is that Sundowns still have two cups to play for and this is a perfect situation for them to haul in Chiefs, with two games in hand.

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