Tinkler wary of Chiefs attack ahead of league clash

Eric Tinkler believes Cavin Johnson has made improvements to Kaizer Chiefs’ attack, as the Cape Town City head coach prepares his side to take on Amakhosi in the DStv Premiership on Saturday at Athlone Stadium.

City beat Chiefs 1-0 at FNB Stadium in the first round of the league, with Khanyisa Mayo getting the only goal of the game against Molefi Ntseki’s Amakhosi on October 3.

Ntseki was sacked later in the same month and was replaced by Johnson, who took over the role on an interim basis until the end of the season.

Pressed on whether he felt there is a difference between Ntseki’s Chiefs and Johnson’s, Tinkler responded: “Yes and no, they are still a team that is extremely dangerous on the counter, with a lot of speed up front.

“They still have issues that we will look to exploit, but their threat up front is massive. And they seem to be utilising it more successfully than they were at the beginning of the season. Now I (also) don’t think they are (only) a counter-attacking team.

“They look to play and pass, but can also go direct with balls in behind and we have to make sure we deal with that, but for me it is (mostly) about us.

“We cannot spend too much time worrying about the opposition and forget about ourselves.”

City’s own problems

City have certainly had their own concerns in 2024, failing to win any of their first five games of the year in all competitions, and losing their last two league games to Stellenbosch and Royal AM.

“The start hasn’t been great to the second half of the season,” admitted Tinkler, who was grateful for this week’s international break.

“We have had an opportunity to fix certain areas of our game that I think were extremely important. We had a lot of injuries, suspensions and players moving, I don’t think the concentration and focus was there.

“The Fifa break came at a good time, we needed …. to get players back fit that were key to us prior to the break, there were some new signings that we needed to make more aware of our expectations of them.”