Tinkler – I Don’t Think We Were Brave Enough

Cape Town City coach Eric Tinkler said his team struggled to keep possession, and he was not happy with their performance in the 1-0 loss to SuperSport United on Tuesday.

It was a game that left Tinkler disappointed, as Bradley Grobler scored in the final ten minutes to grab the victory for Gavin Hunt’s second-placed team.

City conceded the goal when captain Thami Mkhize was receiving treatment on the sidelines and Tinkler said that having dealt with SuperSport well throughout the game, it was disappointing to concede at that point.

But he felt his team weren’t at their best and struggled to keep possession of the ball.

“A lack of possession, simple,” A frustrated Tinkler said after the game.

“A lack of possession, maintaining possession. That’s normally our strength. Normally, by half-time we (have) 300 successful passes, with this game, I think we managed to just get over 200.

“Our possession stats were poor, our passing accuracy was poor, and that allowed them to come more and more and more into the game.

“Normally, we supposed to be dominant at home, in terms of our possession, but that wasn’t the case, it was 50-50 at half-time. We struggled to really link our play through the wide players through 10 and our 9. And we seem to be going more sideways, backwards, sideways, backwards, and we weren’t really looking to take that risk of playing that deeper pass. And, then looking to join.

“The one or two occasions we did do that, we looked a threat, but we weren’t doing it enough in that first half. We spoke about it, fixing that at half-time, but up until then, the majority of the game, I thought we dealt with SuperSport.

“We know what their threat is get it in the wide areas, put in the crosses, try and win as many set pieces that they can and put in the crosses. And I thought for majority of the game, we dealt with that.

“We didn’t deal with it when we were down to 10 men, unfortunately, and it ended up costing us.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think either team deserve to come away with anything. I don’t think it was the prettiest game that you’ve ever seen.

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“So I’m obviously disappointed, because at half-time the feeling I had we were playing with the fear of losing. And I said to the players at half-time, you can’t play with the fear of losing. What you must play with is the fear of not winning.

“And that’s the mentality you need to go out in the second half. But, we weren’t connected today. They made it difficult for us, to connect those lines, so you got to give them a little bit of credit, but, I don’t think we were brave enough, on the ball today. And we ended up not collecting any points.”