Cape Town City coach Eric Tinkler felt his side were undone by visitors AmaZulu in the first half of their 1-0 defeat in the Betway Premiership on Sunday but did enough in the second half to get more out of the game.
AmaZulu again proved City’s bogey team as Pule Eckstein’s 19th minute goal won the game for Usuthu and saw them move above their hosts and into 11th spot in the standings.
“Obviously two very different halves. I think in the first half, we knew that they're a team that commits a lot of bodies in attack,” said Tinkler after the game.
“We worked on it in training in terms of our setup, how to deal with it, but we didn't. For that reason, they created chances and scored the goal, although I did feel the occasions where we did play, we created goal scoring situations ourselves.
"We were always late for the ball in behind and every time we got caught was after our own attack, it wasn't from them building up and playing out from the back.”
Tinkler said his side responded well after the break but they could not forge a breakthrough and lost their unbeaten home record this season.
“Much, much better, but still that final pass is just not there. And you know, they put in two crosses and created two chances. I don't know how many crosses we put in and I don't remember anybody getting onto the end of one. You know, that's the difference.”
Goalscoring has become a problem at City, whose have only netted six league goals this season, making them the fourth worst attack in the league.
“Where the goals are going to come from is a legitimate question and I've been working extensively on that but come match day we're not getting that final product that we need to win football matches. In the second half, it was good to see that they were still trying, they didn't drop their heads, they kept going, kept pushing, right till the end.”
“I thought we created enough to at least get the equaliser. But they did cause us problems still on the counter attack, but you can excuse that to a degree because you're chasing the game. You're taking slightly more risk. So, a lot of work that has to be done right now to get ourselves out of this position that we find ourselves in,” the City coach added.