Hello to you all for the first time in 2007.My hope is that you have all returned from your vacations well rested and ready to tackle the new year and all its challenges, in the same manner that the team is ready to set about their job of ensuring that we are in the title race all the way through the second half of the season, and hopefully we will emerge from it successfully.

The resumption of league games this weekend sees us coming face to face on Saturday evening with SuperSport United. After being at training for the past week we have prepared thoroughly for Saturday’s game and are looking forward to getting our matches in the new year under way again, it might be a new calendar year but in football terms it is still the 2006 – 2007 season. As 2007 gets underway we will be sticking to our old goal of trying to keep the gap down between us and the likes of Silver Stars who are currently leading the PSL, and eventually during the month try to move into pole position.

Going into Saturday’s game we are in the fortunate position of being able to stick with the tried and tested combinations and line ups that effectively did the job for us, through December and got us the results that we were looking for which helped us end the year in second place. We find ourselves in this favourable position because we do not have any major new injuries or suspensions, which would have meant that we would have had to rotate our players around.

What it does mean is that we can keep the same cohesiveness and uniformity that we have had in our last couple of games. I am also confident that the guys will go through January with the same kind of commitment and motivation that saw the team move through December unbeaten. Eventhough we had two weekends off I do not think that the time off would have affected our rhythm at all, as we had a similar length of time off between games in November.

Thankfully we emerged from the November break stronger and managed to put together a good run of results in December, and from what I can see from our past couple of days of training is that the team is looking fit and ready for the five games which lay ahead of us in January.

I did mention earlier that we were generally injury free, some of the carryover injury concerns the likes of Rotson Kilambe and Derrick Spencer, have recovered substantially and the Doctors have given an indication that they could be at full training within the week. We do have Thabo Mooki out for Saturday’s game as he injured his nose on Tuesday and I have been told that it would be safer to rest him for the game.

In conclusion I would like to add that we have worked hard over the past week and are really looking forward towards getting our matches under way once again this weekend, SuperSport have always proven during my season and a half to be a challenging opponent. As one might have witnessed during our league games against them last season, as well as our match in the ABSA Cup last year and this seasons SAA Supa8 Final. SuperSport did the reputation of being a hard team to be a lot of good on the opening day of the season, as they stretched us all the way in a match, which ended in a 2-2 draw.

Saturday’s game will be a tough one and there can be no doubting the fact that SuperSport would also like to take major upward strides, by winning the match so we will need to be vigilant of being over complacent. Instead we will go into the game just like we did in our last six games with the mindset that we need to win the game, and not rely on the opposition to make mistakes but instead we need not to be as clinical in front of goal as we have been in recent times. The key to our success recently has been the fact that we have been able to make the most of the opportunities that have come our way.

For the moment that is all from me I hope to see you all at the stadium on Saturday to enjoy what will be an exciting game, as well as to celebrate Kaizer Chiefs 37th Birthday albeit a day early as Chiefs birthday is actually on Sunday.