Chiefs’ recent results have not inspired much confidence as the season approaches its climax, with the Absa Premiership and Nedbank Cup titles still to fight for.
Their last three games have seen Amakhosi score just three goals, winning one and drawing one in the league, while scraping past a lowly ranked GladAfrica Championship side in the Nedbank Cup last weekend.
This pales in comparison to how the log leaders raced through the first half of the season, before they began the new year with a defeat to SuperSport United and then beat Highlands Park and Cape Town City – both with 3-0 score-lines.
“I think we are doing well. Of course, I think there’s always a possibility to improve. What must I say? I think you know the numbers,” said Middendorp.
“Q-1, Q-2, which position we had from the start [of the season] until now. I think it’s a team with confidence and one with good management quality.
“I’ve said it before that sometimes you must be able to manage a game and there’s another team that recently won the league with 1-0 victories 12 times.
“Let’s be very clear, and that’s a quality of a team that you probably [see] being able to perform, and that will come.
“We played against Royal Eagles, do you think – and I hope – teams will come here and play with two or three strikers, forward running, overlapping fullbacks and so on? No, no, no.
“It will be similar [to the approach of sitting back in a defensive block], and then you have to be very clear structured and that’s what we’re working on, which is very crucial compared to last season where we were always running into 1-0 defeats or 1-1 draws.
“This was one of the targets in our goal-setting, to really say do it properly; do what’s requested adequately, and these types of games will probably bring the outcome at the end of the season.”
