Eric Tinkler has warned his Cape Town City side to be wary of SuperSport United’s aerial ability ahead of the Telkom Knockout final at the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane on Saturday.City are seeking a first trophy just months after they had been formed from the sale of Mpumalanga Black Aces’ franchise to owner John Comitis.
And while they sit top of the Premier League and SuperSport second, Tinkler believes his side are underdogs.
“It’s going to be a tough game, both teams are very good on transitional play and going forward on attack, and obviously that’s an area we need to make sure that defensively we are sound,” Tinkler says.
“We started the season well [defensively], we went four games without conceding a goal and then went through a bad period, especially against Wits. A lot of those goals have been from set-pieces, some have been quality that you can’t fault anybody for, others have been poor marking.
“That’s an area we need to make sure we stabilise, especially against SuperSport, they have a lot of aerial ability.”
Tinkler says the 3-2 victory away at Wits on Friday night has given his side more confidence that they can cause an upset in Polokwane, having now gone nine games unbeaten, winning eight of those.
“It was important to get the result against Wits to continue that momentum and go into this final with confidence. We need to play to our strengths, not worry too much about SuperSport’s strengths.
“The players know the importance of this game, we spoke about all this at the start of the season. It was an opportunity for them to create history this being a new club and every day that they came in they were creating this history, it was up to them whether it would be a positive one or a negative one.
