Posted in News, Team News on Aug 22, 2021.
Stuart Baxter will take charge of his 91st league game as a Chiefs coach when Amakhosi begin their 52nd league campaign later on this afternoon against TS Galaxy at Mbombela Stadium.
Baxter will be hoping that history repeats itself today as he won his first league game in three successive seasons during his first spell at Chiefs with Amakhosi ending two of those games as league champions in 2012-13 and 2014-15 and finished in the top two in all three.
With his eye on the Galaxy game, Baxter feels that he has already gathered sufficient information on his own charges to know their preparedness for the league campaign after their first competitive encounter a week ago in the MTN8.
“You go into your first game of the season looking for a lot of information which we got from the Mamelodi Sundowns match last weekend. Some good and some not-so-good information,” says coach Stuart Baxter.
With Chiefs having lost just one game in open play in their last six games – both official and friendly matches, Baxter is happy with what he has seen. “It helps us to gauge where we are,” adds the Chiefs mentor. “We have played SuperSport in a friendly and Pirates in the Black Label Cup, then Sundowns in the MTN8. We did not lose in open play. If you take the two games against Wydad, we did not lose, and with 11 men against Al Ahly we did not lose. So, I think you start to see a bit of a trend and hopefully that is something we can build on.
“The players continuing to work hard and managing to get a 2-2 result against the reigning champions away from home does not dent your confidence. I think we should take heart from that.”
With that in mind, he has now put his focus on Chiefs’ first league game of the season where he will be looking to win a DStv Premiership game with Chiefs for the 56th time.
“Now we’ve got a really tough game against Galaxy. It’s the first league game of the season away from home. They have recruited a lot and it is difficult to know what to expect from them. I think if we concentrate on our game and do that with quality then I am hoping we can build on the first result,” comments Baxter.
According to Baxter, he knows what Galaxy are about and is wary of their coach Owen Da Gama springing a surprise. “We know their players, but we don’t know what the starting line-up will be,” confirms Baxter. In a way this mean we need to put more concentration on our own game. We probably know the approach Owen Da Gama will use, but we don’t know the exact formation.”
With that in mind and given that Chiefs are in action in three days’ time against Baroka in another league game, the coach will make changes based on what he expects from Galaxy.
“There could be a couple of changes on what suits facing the opponent better,” he divulges. “I don’t think anybody played in the game against Sundowns. We’ve got to look at the opponents as well and say that this game away from home will be a little bit more like this or like this tactically. That may mean that we shift a couple of guys. The technical staff have looked at it and we will make a decision before the game.”
As the Baroka game is close at hand Baxter might set up his stall to effectively use the personnel he desires in both games. “You may definitely want to rest someone because he suits the second game better – you may want to bring in fresh legs. Or you may want to change the set up a slight tweak in the system. It is very much here and there. Let’s get this one out of the way and move onto the Baroka game. At the moment it’s all focus on Galaxy, he confirms.”
According to Baxter, apart from players carrying long-term injuries, Chiefs only injury concern is Reeve Frosler who has a stomach bug.
Victory will see coach Baxter become the first Chiefs coach in the PSL era to win four opening league games of a season since 1996-97 – a record he currently shares with Muhsin Ertugral who led Chiefs to opening game wins in 2000-01, 2001-02 and 2007-08.
The game will kick-off at 17:00 at Mbombela Stadium.
