AFC Leopards coach Stewart Hall blasted his players’ performance in Wednesdays’ match against Sofapaka, where they lost 1-0 in a match played at the Kenyatta Stadium. Hall, speaking after the match, was quick to dissect the performance stating that it was in his view the worst performance of the season.
“No quality…no quality at all about everything we’ve done (vs Sofapaka). The passing, the movement, the crossing had no quality so you don’t deserve to win football matches when you play like that.’’ When asked about what might have gone wrong in the match, he said that it was hard to tell, “well, you don’t know….you can’t say. Training yesterday was excellent but today we didn’t put the training into the game and that was the worst performance of the season.’’
Contentious refereeing decisions…
Hall was also keen to point out several mistakes from the refereeing point, but refused to blame the loss on that factor. “I don’t think the referee helped because there were two good penalty shouts, he didn’t play the full amount of extra time when we were well on top and some of the off-side decisions were very dubious. But that’s football; you can’t blame it (the loss) on that…that is just a factor. The fact is we didn’t play well. If you blame the officials you are giving the players an excuse for losing.’’
Be Patient with the team, we are re-building.
The coach called for patience with the team, insisting that it was a young team with no KPL experience who should be willing to learn from defeats. He also added that he would need one more transfer window to create the squad that he really wants.
“We are building the team; you know it’s a young team so sometimes you learn a lot from defeats, so we have to learn from the defeat today because we didn’t play well. I said that the squad is very young and a lot of these boys don’t have KPL experience, I said that at the start of the season. I also said that it would take two transfer windows to get the squad that I really want to and we have had only one transfer window.
On whether he feels any pressure owing to fans’ frustrations after the game, Hall refuted that saying he does not yet feel any pressure. “No, there is no thing such as pressure…the fans went home very happy for the last two games so that’s football, we’re building the team. They should look at that and say that AFC Leopards is rebuilding, the whole club is being rebuilt…the National Executive Committee, the technical bench, the playing turf; so everything is being rebuilt so you have to have a little bit of patience with that.’’
On Leopards’ next match against Posta Rangers…
Stewart Hall asserted that he will not give any motivations to the team ahead of their next match against Premier League leaders Posta Rangers, insisting that the players will motivate themselves since it is a big match, “You don’t have to (motivate) because it’s a big game so the players will motivate themselves…it’s the small games like today where you have to motivate the players, the big games the players motivate themselves because they know it is a big game,.’’
The English man also said that not much can be done in terms of change in personnel in the squad ahead of their next match because of injuries sustained by his side, “With the injuries we’ve got and the players not available, there is not much we can do. If you look at the striking today we’ve tried three different options: we’ve tried Gilbert with Katerrega and then we tried Gilbert with Ingotse so unless Kiongera is fit for Saturday that is really what we have.’’
