David Mathebula’s performance on Wednesday evening in the centre of midfield against Golden Arrows was described by his coach Muhsin Ertugral as a man of the match showing as he and Siphiwe Tshabalala combined with devastating effect to guide Chiefs to victory against Arrows.

Mathebula tore up the turf as he attacked from deep inside the Chiefs half and at times was too much for Arrows to deal with, the tricky midfielder will be well pleased with his showing against Arrows as he displayed some of his pre injury form which saw him miss a number of The Amakhosi’s matches a few months ago. This was after he was knocked out of action with a metatarsal injury, which befell him back in September during a league game against SuperSport United.

Muhsin Ertugral was looking for a creative spark in his team and Mathebula seemed to provide it, as he shone through out the ninety minutes during the win over the Durban based Arrows. His blissful performance was capped by the fact that he set up two of Chiefs goals, the second of which was a cheeky back heel in to the path of Gerald Sibeko who drilled the ball across the face of goal and into the back of the net. Mathebula though is not looking to let up and wants to do the same against Bloemfontein Celtic on Sunday, and get Chiefs another much sought after three points.

Real job

Getting through ninety minutes of football was important for Mathebula in his process of getting stronger game by game, as he explained “I wanted to play my part for the team, not just in that game but in all the games that I feature in. Getting to play the full game means that right up until the final whistle sounds I have the opportunity to be involved in helping the team get goals”. The work Mathebula believes has just begun and the next level needs to be added as he went on to say, “we performed well against Arrows and now we should move to Bloemfontein with the same positive mind set that we can win the game and get the points. From now for us over the next two games it is a case of ensuring that we collect six points and move with it to the new year”.

Midfield Magic

Mathebula has said that it is always his intentions to be as productive and creative as possible, and feels that with the support he had from the rest of the midfield on Wednesday and the role given him by the coach it allowed him to produce one of his best performances of the season. He said “we clicked on the night and our combination play worked well and I feel that the midfield worked well together, more importantly though we understood what the other guy was doing, we timed our runs to perfection and the passing was spot on”.

Telling contributions

Fifty percent of Chiefs goals against Arrows were set up Mathebula and he can feel satisfied with the assistance he leant on Wednesday to Chiefs success, Mathebula was the assistant in setting up Cyril Nzama for Chiefs third goal with a superb free kick. He talks kaizerchiefs.com through it “I could see their goalkeeper was not looking to comfortable with his positioning and sent the ball over him he managed to back track, he was always going to have difficulty dealing with the ball. So all he did was push it to Shaun’s head and he sent it back to Cyril who finished of the move”.

In the final few minutes he played a cheeky back heel lay off to Gerald Sibeko who struck Chiefs fourth goal, of this he said, “when I turned goal side I had an Arrows player in front of me. Then I saw Gerald bearing down on the goal and opted to get it into his path as fast as possible, the only way was to sell Arrows a dummy and back heel the ball. It jus so happened that everything worked out well and he finished off the move superbly”.