Tinkler blasts his players for failing to defend set play against Arrows

Cape Town City coach Eric Tinkler is upset with his team's performance, particularly their failure to defend set pieces during their 3-2 defeat to Golden Arrows at Mpumalanga Stadium on Sunday.

All three goals Arrows scored through Themba Mantshiyane, Ryan Moon and Nqobeko Dlamini were from corner kicks as the Citizens struggled to cope.

Tinkler expressed his frustration by blasting his players as he felt they were not aggressive enough in defending set play.

“You have to defend corners, we can't defend them and three goals came from there ... not good enough, you end up losing the game because of that,” Tinkler told the media after the match.

“Below poor, I'm extremely angry, we didn't know how to defend corners; three goals we conceded were all from corners. Every time they had corners they looked dangerous. We have to be attacking the ball. We were not aggressive on the set pieces and no one took responsibility.”

City mounted a comeback in the second half to make it 2-2 with goals from Gabriel Amato and Amadou Soukouna but conceded a corner late in the second half which resulted in the third goal.

Tinkler said his players will need to take responsibility as they suffered their third defeat, which left them 11th on the log table. “People taking responsibility, it's as simple as that. You can't blame the coach, I will take the blame but certain action has to come from the players, simple as that,” he said.

“We knew where the threat would be and that was in the set pieces but we could not cope with that. So, it brings into question whether the right guys on the field had time to deal with the crosses. No.

“Defending set pieces ... we have to work on that, but if I look at the game in open play we were not bad, we were 2-0 down and we came back and made it 2-2, we were bad in defending corners, that's how we conceded our goals. So, now we have to go and fix that.” 

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