Orlando Pirates legend Teboho Moloi feels the club should have handled the Gabadinho Mhango situation better by playing him.

Mhango, who is on his way to AmaZulu, was frozen out of the Buccaneers towards the end of the season despite having enjoyed a good run in the Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon earlier this year with Malawi.

While the club didn’t reveal why the Malawian international was sidelined, it was alleged that discipline is one of the factors that contributed to it.

But Moloi believes had they handled it better and played him, the Soweto giants would have won the CAF Confederation Cup final last month and finished in a better position in the DStv Premiership.

“The thing that left the question mark was how they handled the Mhango situation,” Moloi told the media during the Women and Men against Child Abuse athletes’ initiative in Sandton yesterday.

“I mean, the boy had already proven at the Afcon tournament that he is one of the best strikers. I think it’s just man-management; that they could have gone about it [better].

“Use the player, let him play and let him give us the results and at the end of the day deal with whatever off-the-field antics that he was believed to be doing.

“But let him come in, let's help him. I mean, for the cup final, I just feel like had they used him, we would be talking a different story. As you know, when we went to the Champions League final [in 2013] we didn’t have Happy [Jele], we didn’t have Siyabonga [Sangweni] and Andile [Jali].

“And it goes back to the same thing, that previous experience should be lessons to say that if we had a full team, let’s use our full squad and get the results and deal with whatever had to be dealt with after the games.”