We emerged from our first game of 2007 on the wrong end of the score sheet and instead of beginning the New Year in the same manner that we had ended the previous one, we started off by losing our first game of 2007.

It was disappointing to lose against SuperSport on Saturday evening as we had hoped to have started off the New Year with a win, instead we now find ourselves four points adrift league leaders Silver Stars instead of being just a solitary point behind them.

Saturday’s game against SuperSport did not start off well for us. We lost Shaun Bartlett inside the first quarter of the game; it was a big loss for us to have him depart the field so early on. Although Louis Agyemang did play a good assisting role up front and aided Kaizer Motaung in attack, having to play with out Shaun who had been in good form recently meant that we would have had to double our efforts. I just felt that we did not make the most of our opportunities in this game, like we had in the past couple of games.

Kaizer Junior had a big chance mid way through the first half and instead of shooting at the first site of goal he waited and the chance went away, perhaps that moment summed up what was generally a frustrating evening for us.

When SuperSport scored their first goal, I knew then that we were going to be up against it, playing against a team like that you know that once they have taken the lead. They go into a defensive shell and prefer to hit you on the counter attack, which as we saw happened on a number of occasions in the second half.

We could have defended better from their first goal instead of affording them so much time as we gave Mashego a second chance to send in his cross. We needed to act quickly and close down the spaces, which they had. In the end we had to pay for our defensive failings and left both Mofokeng and Chamanga unmarked when Mofokeng grabbed their opening goal.

With regards to SuperSport United second goal it really should not have happened, I am not taking credit away from Mphela but the truth is we gifted them the goal. David Obua should have not wasted time on the ball and he lost possession in a situation that should have seen him easily pass the ball up field, instead SuperSport got the ball and Mphela scored a good goal.

Overall I was not happy with the performance of the team on Saturday. I felt that the guys did not execute and carry out the game plan like they did in our previous game. We did not play like a team who were serious about winning the league. So it was unanimously agreed after the game that we need to iron out our mistakes from Saturday evening’s game, as a result the team were at training on Sunday and we had a discussion as to how we can improve things for Wednesday evening’s game.

The ball really is now in our half of the field and we need to forget about all the games we won in December as well as the loss to SuperSport and begin all over again with our task of catching up with the pace setters.

We have a perfect opportunity to do so when we face Silver Stars in Rustenburg on Wednesday night. It is up to us to make a game of it and get ourselves a win. Silver Stars have a four-point lead over us at the moment and we can bring that down to just one point, which will have us within touching distance of them once more.

It is games like these (against the big teams) that we need to come out and put our best foot forward. If we want to be Champions then we need to win games against the teams currently ahead of us in the title race. After Saturday’s game I think that we have hopefully put behind us our problems and will look ahead to Wednesday with renewed motivation and enthusiasm. We go into the game against Silver Stars with a number of injuries; firstly there is Shaun Bartlett who will miss the game as he has a knee problem.

Along with Shaun is Louis Agyemang who is suffering with a thigh strain and coupled with Louis and Shaun’s injuries is the fact that we have Siyabonga Nkosi out as he is serving a suspension, as he picked up his third yellow card of the season against SuperSport. What these injuries have done is opened up the door for some of the other players, who will slot into the missing players positions they now have the opportunity to stake their claims for a permanent place in the starting eleven.

Further then what I have added there is not much more to add at this time, perhaps to say that we still have four games left this month, two of which are this week and our aim and objective will be to get the maximum number of points out of the games that we have left in January.