What does losing to Sundowns mean to our overall title ambitions and aspirations? Well to be truly honest, it means that although we are not out of the title race we cannot afford to lose or draw a game from now until the end of the season.

By losing on the weekend we have put ourselves firmly on the back foot, whereas Sundowns are clearly in the driving seat as they have a number of games in hand over us and the rest of the teams.

Defeat is never easy to swallow. Losing in the manner that we did has been made more difficult, and looking at the circumstances surrounding the way in which we lost the game, has ensured that it will take a long time for me to wipe this defeat out of my memory, it will linger on with us for a long time.

We put on a display on Saturday that is one I am not proud of and really was left very disappointed by the way in which we played against Sundowns, we were capable of a better performance and the team knows that. At times we were really shaky at the back and even when Sundowns were reduced to 10 they were able to counter-attack us, and even outnumbered us in these counterattacks.

The defence was not entirely awake when Sundowns scored their first goal. More could have been done to stop Torrealba from getting to the ball. Had our guys been awake at the back we could have gotten to the ball quicker and could have prevented the Sundowns striker from getting a sight of goal.

Coming back from a goal down against Sundowns was always going to be tough as they do have the best defensive record in the league, we were fortunate enough to have gotten a break with the penalty. Rowen Fernandez did well to convert the spot-kick albeit at the second time of asking, his reaction in pouncing on the rebound was excellent and he deserved to bask in the glory of scoring the goal. We were presented or almost gifted with a number of scoring chances by a number of goalkeeping errors by Brian Baloyi, whose miss handling of the ball on many occasions we were unable to make count in our favour.

We started off the second half in a positive manner but quickly dissipated and Sundowns got the leader within six minutes of the restart, a lot has been said about Rowen Fernandez spilling the ball at Chabangu’s feet. While I must say it is not an ideal day when your most consistent performer makes a mistake, which has such grave consequences on the over all result in such an important game.

Should I speak as a realist I will say that Rowen knows that making the kind of mistake that he did against Sundowns is not acceptable, especially from a goalkeeper with his experience. Having said that as a team we can not start playing the blame game because when win we do so as a team we also lose together at a team, fair enough mistakes do cost us points. We should also look at Saturday’s game in broader terms and that is that overall our performance was below par, we failed to carry out and execute our game plan.

Even when Sundowns were playing with ten men we could not make our additional player count, instead a team playing with ten men were able to dominate against us at that point we should have driven home our advantage. Our failure to do so summed up our afternoon which was one etched with close shaves and missed chances, we did not display the same kind of fluent passing game that we did a week earlier against Ajax.

I hate to sound like a whiner especially after we have lost a game but I will say that not having Rotson Kilambe or Shaun Bartlett over the past month has really cost us games that we could have won.

Kaizer Junior has really played his socks of all season long and we have seen that in games where he was supported by Rotson or Shaun he has excelled, and really the key to a lot of our success in December lay with Kaizer being aided up front by Shaun or Rotson. It has been a challenge working without Rotson and Shaun but that is professional sport, you have to work with the fact that players will get injured or suspended during a season.

Having said that it must be added the Serge Djiehoua looked dangerous when he came on against Sundowns, his presence in the Sundowns 18 yard area did give their defense must extra food for thought. He was also able to fight his way past the Sundowns defense and was unfortunate enough not to have found an equalizer for us close to the end of the game.

This week we will regroup, gather our thoughts and collectively work together towards rebuilding for our next game against Golden Arrows, in order for us to avoid another lethargic performance we need to ensure that our tactical and technical planning for the game is spot on. Thankfully we do not have any casualties from the game and will have Rotson Kilambe available for the Golden Arrows game .