Is SuperSport’s failure to splash the cash on players sabotaging Tembo?

It is almost as though Kaitano Tembo feels sabotaged by SuperSport United’s management for not opening the cheque book to allow him to sign players of his choice as Matsatsantsa A Pitori continue to struggle on all fronts.

SuperSport have a significant lack of experience in their senior team – the term senior is used as a formality as the majority of the squad members are under the age of 25. The case of veteran defender, Buhle Mkhwanazi, who refuses to vaccinate and has been excused from all team activity – does not help Tembo in any way. 

SuperSport became victims of the giant-slaying Tshakhuma, but what irked Tembo the most is that his young side surrendered a 2-0 lead and he feels if he had a more seasoned team to select from, The Spartans would have been Nedbank Cup semifinalists today.

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“We’ve got no experience in the team. This is the challenge that we are facing at the moment. We only have Ronwen Williams there and Onismor Bhasera but at the heart of the defence that’s where we had problems,”cried Tembo. 

“They could not deal with Rhulani Manzini’s power and Rendani Ndou as well, hence the long balls to those two strikers gave us a lot of problems. We should have won most of those long balls. The first goal came from that because we did not win the first header and they scored from the second ball,” he added. 

It goes without saying that the purse of SuperSport was thinned by the Covid-19 pandemic and it’s probably why they succumbed to their rich rivals, Mamelodi Sundowns’ persistence on buying Aubrey Ngoma and Teboho Mokoena over the last two years. 

Tembo, meanwhile, will continue to have this headache until the end of the season, and with influential player like Sipho Mbule seemingly frozen out by the side, the remaining DStv Premiership games will be a mountain to climb. They play Kaizer Chiefs next.  

“We want to win but at the same time we have to see where the team is in terms of the playing personnel. On the bench, we had young players who had to all come and change the game but it was not to be and that is how it is,” said the United coach.  

He added: “Look at the past three games, we’ve always gone down from 2-0 up and it shows that there is a little bit of potential, we just need a little bit of experience in certain areas because we are really lacking. If we had a little bit of experience, we would have been able to see off a game like this because we played very well.”