Kaizer Chiefs coach Ernst Middendorp believes his side are yet to reach their best performance level saying that it is a question of confidence.

Chiefs have started the season in fine form as they sit atop of the Absa Premiership standings after eight games.

After the debacle of last season, where Chiefs finished ninth and suffered an embarrassing loss in the Nedbank Cup final, the Glamour Boys won six of their opening matches, drawing one and losing just one, while also boasting the best goal difference thus far.

Middendorp, however, is adamant that his side are still building up to their best form after welcoming back a number of injured stars at the start of the season.

‘For me it’s a normal way to have some work in terms of managing the individual tolerances of the players, in terms of loading them, in particular knowing there are guys coming back from a long injury,’ said the German coach.

‘I always [ensure], we go into it to really push and overload them with an intention for progress and, being out [of action] for the FIFA break, by the middle of October we will definitely go into maintenance.

‘Sometimes playing three games in seven days is not really comfortable but, okay, it belongs to the business and we have to manage it in the moment.

‘Internally we’ve had a lot of discussion, you know guys coming with the Tuckman Model, which says after 90 days you must rock.

‘But this model is not for soccer because there are so many parameters – you don’t know injuries; you don’t know how far players coming from other continents are, and it’s not all – you have to look at the real performance coming a bit later.

‘It’s a question of confidence, when we score a goal, all of a sudden we show for five or 10 minutes a bit of combination play and what we can offer normally, and our target should be to get that sort of play for 70-75 percent of the game.

‘We know we don’t have our best performance level for 90 minutes on the field yet,’ concluded the Chiefs coach.