Kaizer Chiefs coach Stuart Baxter believes his players are playing with “too much anxiety” at the moment following their goalless draw with TS Galaxy on Tuesday evening.

Amakhosi should have won the game and walked away with all three points, but substitute Nkosingiphile Ngcobo hit the woodwork in the dying minutes of the game for both sides to settle for a goalless draw at the FNB Stadium.

The result has Chiefs remaining in third place, a point behind second-placed Royal AM with 39 points after 22 matches, while the Rockets linger in 14th place on the table with 19 points after 24 matches.

Baxter insists he could get into his players’ heads but feels they might be playing with anxiety, which prompted his half-time team talk.

“I thought we started quite well,” Baxter told SuperSport TV after the game. “The first 25 minutes without having that real edge of quality that’s going to decide the game. But then it became the game we didn’t want. We lost the ball, they lost the ball, they give us the ball, we give them the ball and there was just no real fluency to the game. And in that situation, either team can score.

“So, we tried to address that at half time. We left the same shape, came out in the second half and it wasn’t better. Even though, as you say, there were chances at both ends. I think that when we went to a 4-3-3 and Bibo and Mshini in the pockets, we had more of the ball and we created better chances.

“I think probably the one that hit the post, if that had gone in, it would have probably reflected the game. I think we shaded it, we didn’t dominate it, but we probably shaded it. And it wasn’t to be so we have to accept it.

“We’ll look at the footage and see if we can find tactical reasons. We’ll look at the stats and see if we can see physical reasons but I can’t, unfortunately, get inside their heads and find out about the psychological reasons. But, I can suspect and I can suspect that the players are playing with too much anxiety at the moment. That when things don’t go their way, they take it hard. It’s not a question of whether they don’t care, it’s a question of whether they care too much and they feel that the shirt weighs a little bit heavy and, at half time, I tried to address that.

“But it needed a tactical change before we relaxed a bit and started playing the sort of football that we want to play. Yes, there will be mistakes when it’s slippery and there’s an aggressive opponent. But the important thing is that we dare to play and dare to make a few mistakes. I think that’s maybe the difference between our good performances and our poor performances.

“Mshini comes in and we want to get him into the pockets driving in on that left foot and we got him in an ideal situation and he gets his shot away and it’s a coat of paint, isn’t it? And that’s the nature of the beast.”