FC Platinum coach Tendai Chikuni is worried over his team’s performance at home which has seen them succumbing to three defeats on the trot.
Report by Sports Correspondent The latest home defeat for the Zvishavane side was a 1-0 loss to a spirited Harare City on Sunday, which was preceded by losses to Caps United and Monomotapa.
After Sunday’s loss, a devastated Chikuni was left shaking his head over the team’s indifferent home performance, which has seen them lose five matches out of a total eight so far this season. They have only lost thrice on the road.
The platinum miners’ home losses include 3-1 to Highlanders, 2-1 to Dynamos, 3-0 to Monomotapa, 2-0 to Caps and the latest being Sunday’s 1-0 to Harare City.
While for Chikuni the losses call for him to go back to the drawing board, fans are convinced that their home ground is jinxed.
“I am worried with the team’s performance at home. I think we really have to look into this as a team to see how best we can stop this trend. If you look at our record, we have been doing fairly well on the road yet we are dismal at home where we are supposed to be collecting maximum points,” he said.
“I just hope this will not sink into the players because it might go on to affect them psychologically. We will try to pick ourselves up from this loss and work to do better in our next games. We cannot afford to relax.”
On Sunday, Chikuni fielded a relatively experimental side with Welcome Ndiweni being deployed in a central midfield role.
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The changes, however, proved catastrophic as the team took ages to settle into the game.
Instead, it was the visitors who settled first and grabbed the only goal of the match in the 27th minute through Crybert Muvuti.
The goal woke FC Platinum up from their sleep, but they recovered too late as Harare City held on to the goal until the final whistle.
It is, however, not fair to blame the loss on Chikuni’s experiments, as the players also conspired to sit back, particularly the striking duo of Mitchell Katsvairo and Benjamin Marere, who took turns to either miss the target or fail to read passes.
Chikuni tried every trick in the bag by introducing Charles Sibanda, Joel Ngodzo and Allan Gahadzikwa, pushing Ndiweni to left-back as he employed a 3-5-2 formation, pushing men forward, but that did not change his team’s fortunes.
After the 90 minutes, the fans went home with their heads dropped, and some among the supporters suggested that there was more to the home defeats.
Could Mandava Stadium be jinxed? Chikuni declined to comment on the matter, but maintained that the team will recover from the devastating home losses.
FC Platinum’s remaining home games are against Chicken Inn, Hwange and Black Mambas.
