With five matches left to battle for their Betway Premiership status, SuperSport United interim head coach Andre Arendse has made an honest admission on the club’s relegation battle.
SuperSport are currently 14th on the log, tied with Cape Town City FC, who are at the bottom of the standings. The Betway Premiership currently consists of 15 teams after the expulsion of Royal AM this month.
The log position is an unfamiliar territory for the three-time league champions. They now find themselves having to fight for survival alongside the likes of Cape Town City.
RELEGATION BATTLE PUTS SUPERSPORT UNITED UNDER IMMENSE PRESSURE
Arendse has acknowledged that they are under pressure but remains positive that their fortunes will change.
“We are in a situation at the moment, from a club’s perspective, where there is pressure. We are trying to negotiate and navigate our way from the bottom of the table,” he said.
ANDRE ARENDSE CONCERNED ABOUT THE LACK OF GOAL CONVERSION AT SUPERSPORT
“It’s very easy for pressure to set in. But I have said to the players, ‘Give it to me’. I will put the pressure there. Just go and play. It’s the second game now that we have taken the lead, and we have conceded.
“But as I said, the fight the players have, and that’s something we work on every day in training, to keep that fight about the work that we do.
“We will be okay if we continue to play like that. We are creating chances, but we need to be a little more clinical with our opportunities. You could see, we are a team that scores some of the fewest goals in the league.”
Arendse added: “So it has become a mental thing. We can’t have names like Bradley Grobler, Samir Nurkovic and Christian Saile, and we are scoring the fewest goals in the league.
“It’s about confidence, and we are doing a lot of functional work at training with the strikers to keep them going. We can see a lot of improvements along those lines.”
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