Posted in News on Oct 15, 2007.
On Monday the coach had his team in the gym early as they were put through another gruelling session, with a physical trainer who showed no mercy on The Amakhosi.
Monday’s session will be The Amakhosi’s final physical session for a while as Ertugral gets back to basics in preparing his team for their trip this coming weekend to Rustenburg to take on Platinum Stars.
The Amakhosi headman knows that the next couple of weeks will be pivotal to the club's hopes of finishing the season with silverware, as the league fixtures come in thick and fast and added to that there are the Telkom Knock Cup matches as well.
Chiefs need to conjure up as many wins as they can and need to garner up points in order to move up the standings, Ertugral is well aware of the challenges that lay ahead in the next couple of weeks.
Platinum start
While his team were going through a strenuous workout on Monday morning, Ertugral sat arms folded and looked on to check that the session was progressing according to plan. Next on the Chiefs coaches mind will be Stars and he will be eagerly plotting their down fall.
A win against Stars it seems is all that is occupying his thoughts at the moment; as Ertugral added “we have had the opportunity to work on our physical fitness over the past two weeks, we now shift focus and will begin the tactical and technical aspects of preparations for our game against Platinum Stars. From this point until the end of the year we will are in a crucial a stage of the campaign which will go along way towards determining how the second half of the season will work out”.
All Ertugral desires his for his team to start off what will be a testing eight week period with a win on Sunday as he continued on by adding, “victory over Stars on Sunday will help set the tone for us for the remainder of the year, the guys have been hard at work the desire and will to succeed is there we now have to carry our plans through on Sunday”.
Unfazed
From this coming Sunday up until the 22nd December, Chiefs will be playing in eleven league games and one or possibly two cup games, bringing to total 13 the amount of matches Chiefs could have from now till the league goes into recess in two months time.
Chiefs fixtures from now till the PSL breaks for the Africa Cup of Nations, sees them coming up against a number of the teams vying for honours, it includes a trip to Bloemfontein to face current log leaders Bloemfontein Celtics.
Ertugral though believes that playing tough opponents week in and week out will work in his team’s favour, “to win the league you have to play every team and beat them. So it will be advantageous for us to play Sundowns, Pirates and Celtics with in weeks of each other as it will help us maintain focus when you play so called tougher teams you condition your mind that you going to be in for a tough time and this team lifts its game especially when under pressure”.