After a weekend of inactivity it is always enjoyable to wake up on a Monday morning with the knowledge that we have an exciting and busy week ahead of us, which will culminate with an important league game against Sundowns on Saturday.

Our preparations have begun in earnest on Monday afternoon, as we shifted our thoughts to the defending league Champions.

For us the most important thing this week is to remain focused on the job at hand, which is to be ready mentally, physically and tactically for Saturday’s game.

We are aiming to win our third game in a row following on our victories against Golden Arrows and Moroka Swallows; two triumphs, which have helped, raise our confidence and morale.

Coming up against Sundowns does not worry me or give me any sleepless nights. What is of paramount importance to us, is that we come out of the game with three points.

I had the opportunity of being in Bloemfontein this past weekend to watch Sundowns as they participated in the Macufe Cup, where they ended up being losing finalist.

In their first game they overcame Ghanaian team Hearts of Oak via the penalty shoot out and then lost narrowly in the final to Ashanti Gold. I was impressed by the level of competition shown by all sides in the tournament.

My focus was particularly to watch Sundowns, especially since they now have a new coach, who will have come with different ideas and methods to the way things were under the previous coaching structure of Miguel Gamondi and Neil Tovey.

In their first game, I noticed that they used a different structure and the coach changed his formation for the final. Gordon Igesund also changed around his players and used guys in different positions; he is fortunate to have a team with a lot of classy players and strength in depth.

Going into this game, our focus is not on one or two players - it is actually trying to fight their weaknesses with our strengths. With the kind of players in their team it will be a mistake to try and focus on certain individuals.

If one has to look at their forward line in Jose Torrealba and Lungisani Ndlela, they posses two very different kinds of players - but two effective and dangerous strikers in their own right. Ndlela’s height can always be a problem for defenders and Torrealba in my opinion is one of the most dangerous strikers in the league.

We are not going to dwell much on who could be the problem for us, instead we will do our planning and work towards our strengths, in going for the win that we want. Whatever happened last season between us is now in the past.

On Saturday we get the opportunity to re-write our history against Sundowns and I believe that the fact that we are going into the game as underdogs will count in our favour.

In the past, we have shown that when we are written off, we do play better and many pundits have already made them odds on favourites to win the game.

Hopefully on Saturday we will prove all the doubters wrong and get our title aspirations onto the fast track, where it should have been a few weeks ago already.

Our planning for the game did have a few glitches in it as we had eight players away on international duty this past weekend. Most of them are expected to return to training sometime within the week.

The five players who travelled with Bafana Bafana to Zambia are expected back in training on Tuesday morning, as they only arrived back in the country late on Monday afternoon.

We are unsure as to when David Obua will return from Niger where he was on duty with the Ugandan National team; some of the information we have received suggest that he could be back either Wednesday or Thursday.

Most worryingly of all is Tinashe Nengomasha who got back to South Africa early Monday afternoon. I did have a word with him over the phone and he informed me that he picked up an injury in Zimbabwe’s game against Malawi.

He has a swollen ankle and we will have to wait till Tuesday morning to assess the extent of the injury before making any further decisions.

Other injury worries surround Shaun Bartlett who has been nursing and injured ankle - we will monitor him as the week progresses.

Apart from that, the medical staff has informed me that we are pretty much injury-free at this point and will have an almost full strength squad to choose from, barring of course Siphiwe Mkhonza. He has to sit out the Sundowns game as he is serving a suspension. He will be available for selection when we take on SuperSport United in the SAA Supa8 Final next weekend.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Bafana Bafana, and not just our players who were involved in the victory over Zambia, but the entire team including the coaching staff for the win in Lusaka on Sunday.

The team played well under pressure, and did a magnificent job in managing to defeat one of the strongest teams on the African continent away from home.

Not many people gave Bafana Bafana much hope of winning the game; against all the odds they managed to come home with a historical and memorable three points.

To all our supporters purchase your tickets early for the game they are presently on sale around the country and be there on Saturday as you play an important part in our quest for glory.

Together towards three points

Ernst Middendorp


Head Coach Kaizer Chiefs