Smiso Msomi
Cape Town City head coach Eric Tinkler has taken his side’s elimination from the Carling Knockout Cup as a heavy blow to their wishes for the 2024/25 campaign. The Cityzens’ ambitions to win a first trophy in five years were dashed as they suffered a penalty shootout quarter-final defeat to Richards Bay on Saturday.
Tinkler has openly admitted on numerous occasions that he does not feel his team has enough to challenge for the Betway Premiership and therefore have revised their goals in recent years. City have prioritised cup competitions and a finish inside the top three to qualify for CAF competitions. They are yet to add to their Telkom Knockout (2016/2017) and MTN8 (2018/2019) trophies and are now left with the Nedbank Cup to try and end that spell.
Speaking after his side’s loss against Richards Bay at the King Zwelithini Stadium, Tinkler expressed his disappointment.
“It’s a massive blow. We set ourselves objectives and targets at the start of the season and at the moment we’re not meeting those targets so it’s a really massive blow.”
City was one of the busiest clubs on the transfer market ahead of the season, having recruited 15 more bodies for their first-team squad, including experienced campaigners like Kamohelo Mokotjo, Fortune Makaringe and Haashim Domingo. However, those recruitments have not been reflected in their results at this early stage, as his side has won just three matches out of the ten they’ve played in all competitions so far.
Even more worrying is the fact that just one of those wins has come in the league in five outings, losing two and also drawing the other two. City currently sits in the 13th spot of the Betway Premiership standings and looks far off from the side that finished the season in fourth place in the last campaign.
Tinkler has offered a very optimistic assessment of his team so far, insisting he expects improvement over the coming weeks as his team builds their chemistry.
“We brought quite a few new faces and some of those faces came from the DStv Diski Challenge, some of them came from the NFD and they’re players that need to adapt to the system that we’re playing. I think those players will progress well,” he explained.
“At the same time, we brought in some well-known names, so we brought in quite a few players to rebuild the squad. But we started well in our offensive play, but somewhere along the line we’ve kind of lost the wheels along the way and we have to find out what’s the reason for that because I believe we have the depth to do well this season.”
City will have nearly a month before they set foot in a competitive match after their Carling Knockout elimination, as well as the upcoming international break. They will welcome high-flying Polokwane City to Cape Town on the 27th of November.