Tinkler – We Rode Our Luck A Little Bit

After their 2-0 win over TS Galaxy on Saturday, Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler said that it wasn’t their best performance and paid credit to their opponents who made it tough for his team.

The victory at the DHL Stadium lifts City to second in the DStv Premiership, moving three points ahead of Royal AM, who do however still have a game in hand.

Tinkler said Galaxy made things really tough for his team, but while his team wasn’t at their best, he was delighted to get the three points and move on, after a ten day period that saw City play four games in quick succession.

“I’m just happy with the three points but I don’t think we performed well today, to be brutally honest,” Tinkler said in the post-match press conference.

“I think we have to give them a lot of credit because they came here, they put us from the first whistle under a lot of pressure. They know that we are a possession-based team, we like to play out from the back, and right at the beginning, they were pressing us high with the front three.

“And to a degree, we struggled to come out with the ball, and we ended up losing possession of the ball a lot.

“But obviously, the pitch doesn’t help us much. There I must also be brutally honest, the condition of the pitch right now is not the greatest and doesn’t suit the brand of football that we play. But we still try to come out with it, and on those occasions that we do, we look threatening.

“But I have to give them a lot of credit, because they pressed us really well. And then the right centreback was playing these long balls in behind us and Mbatha was getting on the end of it, and Hugo kept us in the game with two very, very good saves.

“So we spoke about it at halftime, that it’s important in our buildup phase to rather let’s look to try and play off Mayo, look to play the balls into the channels. They commit a lot of bodies into attack, they’re playing a very, very high line and we’ll catch them on the counter, which we did in the first half, that got us the goal, off a mistake from them, and then we play on the transition and we get the goal.

“And then we had maybe five or six off chances in the second half to go find that second. But their pressure was nonstop. Even once we got the penalty, they kept coming at us, and they hit post right towards the end, so I have to say tonight, our performance, collectively was not great.

“Defensively, also not our best performance, a lot of mistakes in defence, giving them too much time. We needed to press and we didn’t and then we needed to drop off and we didn’t, and they nearly punished us tonight.

“But we rode our luck a little bit, and sometimes you just got to say to yourself, thank God for the three points and even when we play ugly football and we can collect some points, makes me happy.

“Because I think I’ve been on that end before where you work extremely hard, you create so many chances and you don’t score and you end up drawing the game nil-nil a little bit like what happened to us now against Chippa. You know, we worked so hard, we were really really good on the ball, but the ball just wouldn’t go in the net, and we missed the penalty.

“So I’ll take this one, especially after the game against Chippa.”

City play AmaZulu next, before ending their season away in the Western Cape derby against Stellenbosch.

To read the FREE digital version of the iDiski Times newspaper, with interviews with Junior Khanye, Roger de Sa and Sundowns scout Tera Maliwa as well as an update on AmaZulu’s coaching shortlist and rumours about Samir Nurkovic, Miguel Timm and a PSL defender Chiefs are monitoring, click below!