Kaizer Chiefs head coach Stuart Baxter has explained why he opted to use three centre-backs during his side’s thrashing by Royal AM.
Baxter opted to pick the 3-4-3 formation against newcomers Royal AM, the same formation he already chose in the 2-0 defeat to Mamelodi Sundowns last week.
Chiefs, though, were beat 4-1 by Royal AM in the DStv Premiership encounter, played at the FNB Stadium and Baxter tried to explain the thinking behind his tactical approach.
“Yeah, obviously, when we’re in the situation that we’re in try to put together different sorts of strategies and corporations and structures within the team, 4-1 is absolutely not the desired result,” Baxter told reporters.
“And the reason that it became 4-1 is because we chased the game and made the poor decisions and poor mistakes. So the reason we got 4-1, if we did just keep it tight and kept on playing, maybe it’s 2-1, and people are not crying so much.
“But we can’t do that, we got to go and win the game. We had to try and get back into the game. In the MTN8 vs Sundowns, we got back into the game from 2-0 down, so we had to try and do that.
“Playing with three centre-backs? We played against Baroka in the last 15 minutes and even against Sundowns, we conceded goals by people changing the play from one side to the other and our distances was a little bit wrong and then you get a cross in and we ended being a man short at the centre.
“So we gave up goals like that despite playing quite well apart from that.
“So, if you remember the goals against Sundowns and then even if you remember the goal against Baroka from the set play, it was at the far post and you remember the Sundowns goal now, was at the far post.
“We are having a problem with higher distances. So our idea there was to go with three centre-backs. And we can took that wing-back around and kill that space. Though, it has worked, but we’ve still conceded goals in poor situations for us.
“The 3-4-3, the two wing-backs, getting higher and wide when we have the ball has helped us a lot. We’ve scored and we’ve had joy with it.
“But the question is, can we defend as efficiently with the four as we can with the three plus two, because the front players play almost exactly the same.
“We have a nine and two pocket players and the two centre midfield players, that’s almost exactly the same. You either take that centre-back and make it into a defensive midfield player that drops in between your centre-backs and build up for you or you have centre-back that gives you three centre-backs.
“It’s about finding balance, and the balance was obviously wrong tonight.”
