Highbury FC must sharpen their defensive skills as they prepare to face Cape Town City in Friday’s Motsepe Foundation Championship clash at the NMU Madibaz Stadium (3.30pm).
This is the view of of the club’s head coach, Kabelo Sibiya, following a 2-1 defeat for the Gqeberha side against The Bees on Sunday at the KaNyamazane Stadium in Mbombela.
The Yellow Nation scored first to take an early lead in the first half but faded in the second half, conceding two goals via free kicks.
The loss comes after Highbury defeated Gomora 2-0 to end their eight-game league winless streak.
Sibiya had hoped his team would score their second consecutive league win on Sunday, but things did not go as planned.
Highbury are still 12th on the log with 23 points from 20 matches.
“We are looking forward to our match against Cape Town City on Friday,” Sibiya said.
“However, we need to defend well if we want to win.
“We stand a good chance of winning matches now that goals are coming and we are starting to score again.
“Now we have to defend better; we will work hard on that to improve.”
Reflecting on their recent defeat, Sibiya believes they could have defended better against the Bees.
“We started the match well.
“We dominated in the first half, and we scored early and took control of the match.
“The opponents made four changes straight away at halftime. They even changed their game plan in the second half, but we still dominated the match.
“However, we had a couple of turnovers, and we committed some fouls that led to the free kicks.
“The opponents gained confidence in the match, and we conceded a goal from a long kick, which we could have defended better, but we lost the header.
“Later, we conceded a free kick on the halfway line, which was kicked inside our box.
“We lost another header, which ended with the opponents’ scoring to make the score 2-1.”
Sibiya said after these setbacks his team kept pressing and had further chances, which they could not convert.
“I believe we could have defended better in those two moments, because our goalkeeper did not make any saves in that match.
“It’s only those two moments that ended up at the back of the net, so I believe that we can defend better than we defended on Sunday.”
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