On the plane back to Johannesburg, through my drive back home from the airport and all of Sunday night - all I could think about was how we threw three points away and with it one would hope not the league. The reality of the situation as it stands is that we need help from other teams in order to have a chance of getting back into the title fight. If Sundowns and Pirates don’t drop points on Wednesday then we can really say it is curtains for us in the 2005-2006 season.

I am not a whinger and do not want to sound like one either, the more I think of Sunday’s game I just begin to upset myself more. With the amount of chances that we had, we should have comfortably won the game by about three or four goals and collected the three points that were on offer. In the end, old problems came back to haunt us, most glaringly our inability to convert chances in front of goal was transparent and it really cost us dearly.

The statistics given to me at the end of the match showed that we had something like twenty five attempts at goal and the opposition was on six. This kind of information shows our dominance in matches, but it does not mean much if you do not convert the chances that you create.

Of all the shots we had on target we never really tested their goalkeeper because all our attempts were straight to him at height that was comfortable for him to easily deal with. When you let your opponents off the hook the way we did on Sunday - they will always grow in confidence and it worked against us because they scored and we can now only rue our missed opportunities.

I did mention above that our inability to finish in front of goal was a problem; I must though commend Louis Agyemang. He personally had a great game against Classic and he played his heart out. Agyemang might not score a lot of goals but what he does do is unlock the door by opening up defences and creating the right kind of chances, what he needs is a partner who can finish off the opportunities he creates. If you were at the game on Sunday, you could bare testimony to the fact that Louis was simply outstanding, the way he turned the defense inside out just before half time was world class. I have not seen many strikers in the world who could do such a move; we have to a now wait to the off season to strengthen ourselves in this department.

We do have Serge Djiehoua back again and I know he and Louis will be really to do the job for us in the next couple of games as they showed in the latter stages of our game against City Pillars. In the new season we will be structuring the pair of Agyemang and Djiehoua who will be central to our plans going forward .They are great players and have the tenacity and the work ethic of great strikers. It is obvious that we will need to draft in various players to help add to our current strength and make us a force in the next season.

I do not like to dwell much on the future and things are not completely lost for us as we do have the opportunity to still win the league should certain results fall our way - I am sure some of them will. There is also the ABSA Cup which provides us with the best opportunity of ensuring that we round off the season with silver ware, winning the ABSA Cup will be good for us going into next season and we would like to fend off Black Leopards and play Sundowns or Pirates in the semifinals and finals respectively.

Let us not jump over ourselves - there still is the business of playing Bush Bucks on Saturday and living in hope that Sundowns will slip up in mid week against Jomo Cosmos and I am confident that this can happen. Cosmos might not play at their best all the time, but when they come up against either Chiefs, Sundowns or Pirates they play with a lot of determination and confidence. If you have the opportunity to see them against the big three you can be forgiven for thinking that they are fighting for league honours.

Nevertheless we will see what happens in the week and then get back to basics on Tuesday with two training sessions as we prepare for the running of the Bucks on Saturday evening.

Yours In Love and Peace

Ernst Middendorp