Cape Town City went second in the DStv Premiership after their derby win on Sunday over Cape Town Spurs but the performance in the 2-0 victory did not particularly please coach Eric Tinkler.
City advance to 29 points, six behind runaway leaders Mamelodi Sundowns, as they won for a seventh time in their last nine league matches.
But they had to battle for the points with Relebogile Mokhuoane striking a superb free kick and then grabbing a late second goal from Jayden Rhodes.
“It was always going to be a difficult match for as much as my boss (John Comitis) thinks we can walk all over this team, it was always going to be extremely tough,” said Tinkler, who has now given his players time off.
“You know, I think especially after the result from SuperSport against Richards Bay. I think it gave them (Spurs) a little bit of hope, thinking, ‘well, if they can do it to the second-place team, then we can do it’.
“So, I always knew it was going to be a battle. My biggest fear the whole week was the players going into the game with complacency, especially after the performance we put up against Sundowns. I’ve been in this game for too long and, unfortunately, that’s exactly how we started … complacent,” he added.
“We allowed them to create a few dangerous situations right at the beginning. And it took us a long time to settle. We didn’t deal with a long ball, which we spoke about. We didn’t deal with the second balls; we didn’t play with the intensity and the energy that we needed to on the ball. We were giving the ball away cheaply and ended up making the game extremely hard for ourselves.”
Tinkler had to raise his voice in the change room during the half-time break.
“I had to climb into them because I was not happy and it was a battle the whole game, from start to finish. They had two-three chances, but we had chances to kill it, we needed the second goal to really change that. When we did score the second, that’s almost like it settled us and then we had periods where we could keep the ball. We should have done that from minute one all the way to the minute 90,” he said.
