Sundowns on the way to historic title run-in

Mamelodi Sundowns could well be on their way to matching, or even surpassing, last season's record of 71 points in the Absa Premiership, coach Pitso Mosimane believes.

Despite a growing injury list, Mosimane has the luxury of calling on players such as Wayne Sandilands, Sibusiso Vilakazi and Yannick Zakri to come in for injured stars Denis Onyango, Khama Billiat and Anthony Laffor.

Sundowns showed they are a class above the rest by grinding out a 2-0 victory over title challengers Bidvest Wits at Loftus on Saturday.

"We don't look up the log. What's good for us is that we are three points ahead of our schedule [target]. So we need to win against Chippa [tomorrow at Loftus, 7.30pm] and complete this block. If we keep going like this, we are en route to getting the same number of points we had last year," said Mosimane, after goals from Hlompho Kekana and Vilakazi secured victory over the Clever Boys.

"Unfortunately we are running short of numbers. Khama is not there, Laffor is not there and now Denis is not there. They'll be out for about five games.

"But it's not a place to complain about because we played without the CBD [Castro, Billiat and Dolly] in the three games before the break in December and we won three of them."

Against Wits, Sundowns dug deep for the victory. It was not a match supporters would have enjoyed watching, with tackles flying in on a pitch described as "heavy" by Clever Boys coach Gavin Hunt.

"We have experience for this kind of game. This is like a Champions League game. We've been to Kumasi, we've been to Alexandria. There's no football. It's a different kind of football when you go there -and you learn from those games," said Mosimane.

"There are games where we can score five or six, but not this one. We had to match Wits on their strength.

"We had to match them on set pieces because you see how they destroyed Ajax. You saw what happened with Baroka.

"It was not a game for us to be expansive and show off. The Sundowns we have can play pretty football and it can grind out a result."