With Cape Town City notably quiet in the transfer window, coach Eric Tinkler says he is pleased with the squad though they will be competing on all fronts in the upcoming season.

The Citizens, who will be competing for the DStv Premiership title, MTN8, CAF Champions League and the Nedbank Cup, only signed two players, Jordan Bender and Marc van Heerden, while they are likely to bring in Lebogang Manyama who is currently doing his rehabilitation with the team.

Tinkler said the reason they didn’t sign many players in the ongoing transfer window is that he doesn’t want to have a big squad as it won’t be easy to manage it.

“I think for me we made a lot of changes in December when we released seven players and brought in a whole bunch of new faces then,” Tinkler explained to the media yesterday.

“So obviously we won’t be looking deep in the transfer window now. We brought in Jordan Bender. We saw him in December. He was on trial with us from Orlando City [in the US]; very creative, clever footballer on both feet and likes to score goals as well.

“We only look to strengthen in certain areas just to boost the squad slightly more than it was last season. We carried only 24 players last season now we went to 26 with the potential of adding one more to 27. We are not believers in a massive squad because managing that is not easy.”

Though they didn’t sign many players, the Citizens didn’t also release players and Tinkler is happy that they kept many of their players.

“What I’m happy about is that we kept the majority of the squad together and it is about continuity and the way we finished off last season was extremely positive. Now it is about taking that continuity forward in the new season,” he said. 

“Lebo joined us, now he is doing rehab. We know he had a knee operation. So, he is going to be working with us for the next two weeks on his rehab programme.

“We will look to try and get him through that and eventually into some friendly games and once he manages that we will make decisions then.”