Amakhosi coach Stuart Baxter has apologized to the club’s supporters for the poor end to the disappointing home DStv Premiership defeat to Royal AM.

The Chiefs coach was encouraged by the team’s start to the game in the first 30 minutes, saying “the structure was quite good, the movement was quite good and we were creating chances, but again we failed to take those chances”.

Defensive errors, he believed were the team’s undoing, and they were further punished by their opponents when trying to chase the game.

“As we’ve done in previous games, we gave up a rather unnecessary and sloppy goal from our side. We then got into a situation where we want to chase the game a little bit, but we’ve got plenty of time, so we try to stay patient. Then (Phatutshedzo) Nange gets his injury and we have to change the game a little bit and we lose a little bit of balance,” said Baxter, speaking after the 4-1 loss against the league’s newcomers.

Conceding a second goal, the Chiefs coach said, meant they had to really chase the game, and that the players struggled a bit to adapt to a change in formation.

He rued poor decision making from his players in key moments of the game “that are destroying the complete performance”.

He was also disappointed at immediately conceding a goal after they had scored to claw the game back to 2-1 in the second half.

While he acknowledged the defeat “put a different spin to our start to the season” and that he was not happy with the performance, “we can’t let it taint everything we’ve been doing”.

“We chased the game and made poor decisions and poor mistakes. If we had just kept it tight maybe it’s 2-1, but we can’t do that, we’ve got to try and win the game and get back into the game. Like we did against Sundowns (in the MTN8) and came back from two nil down, you’ve got to try and do that,” said Baxter.

He was disappointed by the last 10 minutes of the game and the manner of the team’s defeat, which he felt came about because of his team’s desire to chase the game.

“We need to apologise to our supporters for the manner in which the game finished. What started as a good night turned into a very poor one from our side,” Baxter said.