One can feel the tension building as we lay the finishing touches atop our preparations for Saturday’s game against Ajax Cape Town, who have caught the rest of the league napping and ascended to the top of the league this past week.

Where as a number of the teams out in front including ourselves had dropped critical points in recent weeks, Ajax Cape Town have wasted no time in taking advantage of these slip ups and have moved up a gear and gone to the top of the league.

Going into Saturday’s match there is a real feel-good-factor within the camp, despite the fact that we are playing against a team who are on top of their game we are really confident that we can turn over the form book. Coming up against a team who are displaying the kind of form that Ajax are at the moment, will bring out the best in us, especially since the media is not expecting us to win the game. Playing as the underdogs and with the pressure on Ajax as they are the form team, being the underdogs will allow for us to be able to play our normal game and be at ease on the field of play.

I did have the opportunity of watching Ajax’s midweek game against Jomo Cosmos and not to take anything away from Ajax I must just add that, Cosmos did not look like the same team that played against us three days earlier. This at the moment is not about Cosmos it is about Ajax Cape Town, they are a team that is strong in midfield and at the back as well, in Hans Vonk they do possess one of the best goalkeepers in the country.

Ajax demonstrated against Cosmos that if they are given a half chance they will punish you, we need to keep our shape at the back and not lose possession in dangerous situations.

Throughout the week we have been working on a number of our failings from the Cosmos game as well as working on keeping Ajax at bay, I have made the team aware that it does not help if at the one end we have the backline working tirelessly at keeping out the opposition. When the ball does come back up the other way and goal scoring opportunities fall our way we squander them, a case in point is the Cosmos game as we should have wrapped up the game in the first half.

With all the opportunities that came our way instead we were trailing at half time, it is imperative and I can not stress it enough that we need to be more ruthless in front of goal.

With regards to other news in the camp we have had a new addition to our injury list this week with Siphiwe Mkhonza; he picked up a knock against Cosmos and will sit out of this weekend’s game. What it does mean though is that we will have to shuffle things around at the back, we were hoping to have Fabian McCarthy back to full fitness for the game against Ajax so that he could have slotted in at the back. Unfortunately he has not sufficiently recovered to take to the field this Saturday; Fabian we hope will be back in action for next weekend’s game against Sundowns.

Finally just to update you on some other team news last week we reported on the clubs website, that Chiefs under 19 players Kagiso Senamela and Xolani Mabaso were being loaned out to Mvela Golden League team Durban Stars.

There has been some changes to that and the pair will no longer be teaming up with Stars, instead they will join another of our players Lucky Mzizi on loan at Amazulu for the rest of the season. I feel that moving to Amazulu instead of Stars will be more beneficial to their development, as they will get the opportunity to test out the waters in the PSL. It will allow them to get used the level of competition at a higher level, it will assist them going forward in their careers.

That’s it for this week, till later

Ernst Middendorp