We’ve done our homework on City, says Mokwena
Rhulani Mokwena is happy with the amount of time he and Manqoba Mngqithi had with their Mamelodi Sundowns players in the past couple of days as they used the time to “integrate” and the many players who have joined the club.
Steve Komphela, Rulani Mokwena and Manqoba Mnqgithi during the MTN8 quarter final between Mamelodi Sundowns and Bloemfontein Celtic at the Moripe Stadium.(Photo by Samuel Shivambu/ Backpagepix/ Gallo Images)
Sundowns’ early exit from the MTN8 meant it gave the co-coaches a free weekend to work with their squad.
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“The good thing is that we have had time on the pitch to work on … skills and routines. It has given us a little bit of time to induct and try to introduce some of the new players into our way of working in our defensive and offensive schemes. We are facilitating a smoother process and synergy amongst our players,” said Mokwena.
Sundowns face a tricky game against in-form Cape Town City on Wednesday evening at the Cape Town Stadium. Mokwena seems to have done his homework on the Mother City outfit and could unleash one of their former players, Kermit Erasmus, who has a scoring appetite when it comes to playing against his former teams.
“Cape (Town City) have a clear profile, they are a team that plays a 4-3-3 formation with a good structure and they are well-coached. They have clear indications of what they want to do with the ball and what they want to do when they lose the ball, so we have got to be ready and strategic in terms of nullifying the threats that they possess, whether through the structure of the game form or individual players, they have a lot of quality players within the team.
“They got a very good result in Maritzburg (City won their last match 1-0 at United) and they played very well … it is very difficult to get a result against Maritzburg. They will come into the match with more confidence and if you ask them, they probably would have wanted to play over the weekend to keep the momentum. We also would have loved to play also regardless of the result we got against TTM (Sundowns could only draw 0-0),” said Mokwena.
He adds: “We dominated … we created 10 good chances. Our expectant goal data shows that we should have won the match. If we play that match 10 times, five or six times we would win that type of match with the chances that we created … We are happy that we are showing a lot of progress.”
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