Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler was frustrated after their 1-0 loss to Stellenbosch FC, as their Cape neighbours once again won a derby clash between the two sides.
It was the seventh game between the two clubs in which City failed to get a win in since Tinkler returned to the club, as City’s last win against Steve Barker’s team came in 2020.
Devin Titus scored the only goal of the game, finishing off a swift counter midway through the first half.
Tinkler was frustrated, when asked if Stellies ‘had their number’ again.
“The counter attack number, basically,” Tinkler replied.
“That’s the frustrating part, that it’s always the same old, same old problem against them. They obviously wait for your mistake, and they punish you.
“I think first 20 minutes, we controlled the match, we had the upper hand, but you don’t punish. And obviously there’s your problem. You’ve got to punish in those moments, you’ve got to kill them off, and we don’t, simply don’t kill them off, we don’t make the right decisions in the right areas.
“And then, ja, it’s gonna come, we knew it was going to come, we inform them, we tell them. Titus was staying there, Rayners is staying up there, Oura is staying up there. And their function is purely to hit you on the counter.
“So when you go forward, and you don’t take your chances, you better make sure of two things: One, that when you lose it, you press to win it back. Two your rest defensive is sorted. And their chances come from that, they get two, three chances from that situation only. So we’ve only got ourselves to blame.
“The fluidity in our game right now, isn’t there. You see glimpses, we saw the first glimpse of 15 minutes, 20 minutes in the first half. And then we started to see certain glimpses of it towards the end of the game, but there was a large period of the game that the fluidity is not there, the connection is not there. And that we’re going to have to sit and analyse properly to try and fix it.
“Certain senior players – that I call senior players, because I’m not referring to the older ones, I’m calling the senior players are not contributing enough, not enough. And I think they need to see themselves as being those senior players. They’re no longer development players, they’re senior players now. So that’s something that we need to deal with.”
