The Amakhosi reserves, who lost for the first time in the Premier Soccer Reserve League to Jomo Cosmos last week, are still in joint first place on the league with Orlando Pirates.

The team coached by Ace Khuse and Ryder Mofokeng will be looking to hold on to their top spot when they take on their Soweto rivals Moroka Swallows later on this week.

Swallows currently lie in seventh spot in the eight team league and are one place off the bottom with one win and a draw after their opening six games.

Given Swallows record in the league one would feel that Chiefs should not have a difficult time collecting three points on Thursday. Not so says Chiefs reserve team coach Ace Khuse who believes his team will be pushed all the way by Swallows when the teams clash in two days time. Khuse talking about his team's match against the Birds said “Swallows might have had a poor start to the season, that does not give us a license to take things for granted. We are aware that we need to win to keep up the pressure on Pirates, so we will not be leaving anything to chance, and will be thorough in our preparations as we aim to hunt down the three points on offer with ruthless precision and efficiency”.

Even though his team had lost for the first time in the pilot league, going down 2-0 to Jomo Cosmos, Khuse still believes that The Amakhosi reserves have the mettle to come out of the league as the top team.

Khuse explained further “During any campaign a team will have set backs, we were unfortunate to lose against Cosmos at the least we should have come out of the game with a point. If truth be told it must be said that we had the chances to have won the game against Cosmos, we literally paid the penalty by not converting any of them. We have learnt our lessons from that game and we will have to use our possession more wisely in future games, and aim to finish off the opposition by converting the chances that come our way early on in the game on Thursday”.

By not converting the chances that come their way, Ace believes that his players are putting pressure on each other, which can ultimately work against the team. When he said “in two of our games against Pirates and Cosmos we saw first hand that if we do not take our chance first up, we will put pressure on ourselves and not matter how we dominate the game or how much possession we will have it will count for nothing”.

Khuse is not looking at the loss to Cosmos as a setback though, instead the former Kaizer Chiefs midfield wizard beliefs that it has made his team more determined to want to be champions of the inaugural PSL reserve league.

“Over all there is a real sense of self belief within the team that we can go all the way and win the championship, with Pirates losing as well it has worked in our favour” said Khuse, he continued on by adding “we need to keep cool heads and take things one game at a time. If we remain calm and composed as we have been for the better part of the season I feel that we will have taken many steps in the right direction”.

Ace believes that with back to back home games over the next two weeks, the Amakhosi reserves are in a strong position, and will use the fact that they are playing at home to their advantage. Khuse said “the league enters a crucial stage for us as the Swallows game is our last of the first round of games, and the following week when we play Benoni United it will ring in the start of the second round of matches. Firstly we need to end off this round of games with a win and follow it up by kicking off the second round games with a victory. It is evident to us that a win will lift our spirits once more and will give us the momentum that we will need to go all the way and come out of the league as the winners”.

With this past Monday being a public holiday, all reserve league games have been postponed to Thursday (12-04-07). The Amakhosi reserves will host Swallows in Eldorado Park in two days time. Kick off for the game is at 16h00 and there is no admission fee for fans attending the game.