Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler believes their next opponents Orlando Pirates have improved a lot this season, but insisted his side can beat them in their upcoming DStv Premiership clash.
Tinkler’s men suffered a 1-0 home defeat to Sekhukhune United on Wednesday, making it three successive losses for the club after they had started 2023/24 with two wins.
City will next face Pirates next week Tuesday and the former Bafana Bafana midfielder argued that the Buccaneers have “massively improved” compared to last season, even though results might not show it yet.
“Pirates are a very, very good team. A very good team, and massive threat going forward. So defensively, we’re going to have to be structured, organised,” he said.
“But you know, we got to go there and play without fear. You know, they are a good team, I think the season, although the results haven’t been as good as they had hoped themselves, I definitely see a massive improvement from them from this season to last.
“So it’s not going to be an easy match away from home. But we’re gonna go there and we’re going to fight.”
City have a tendency of turning up for big games such as the Pirates one, but seem to drop too many points against perceived weaker sides – a notion Tinkler agreed to, saying he is not afraid of facing the Sea Robbers, even though they enter the game under some pressure.
“I agree with you. One of our biggest issues is that,” he added.
“So do I have fear going into the Pirates game? No. As you said, we beat them before, we can beat them again.
“I firmly believe that and that’s gonna be the mentality from now until we play them next [week] to prepare ourselves the best way possible, to go and compete and as a coach, I’ve never ever gone into any game thinking, if I can get a point out of this I’m happy.
“Every single game I plan, I go there with the idea and that I want to win. I want to collect all three points and even more so now. Even more so now because we’ve put ourselves under pressure by not collecting the three points tonight.
“So we made the task even harder.”
