Chitembwe lauds CAPS’ defence

By Nigel Matongorere

CAPS United coach Lloyd Chitembwe is pleased with how his team is shutting out opposition in these early weeks of the 2018 Castle Lager Premiership season.

Makepekepe who have kept three clean sheets in their first four league matches, began the new campaign with three straight draws against Harare City (0-0), Bulawayo Chiefs, (2-2) and FC Platinum (0-0).

The Green Machine finally picked up their first win of the season following Sunday’s 0-2 victory over Black Rhinos at the National Sports Stadium.

With such a neat defensive record, Chitembwe believes his team is laying a good foundation to challenge for honours this year.

“Clean sheets are very important especially in this league. This shows how difficult we are to beat; collectively as a team, we are very compact and we don’t give away chances,” Chitembwe said.

“It’s not easy to score against us and these games have been testimony to that. I’m very pleased that we were creating chances since the previous game but we couldn’t convert.

“Today, we were very lucky that we managed to get the goals but all the same, I thought Rhinos gave us a scare especially in the last moments of the game.

“They came at us but we were very resilient and at the end of the day we managed to get the result that we so much wanted.”

Chitembwe was full of praise to double scorer Simba Nhivi, who netted a brace against the army side to give Makepekepe their first win of the season.

Since the start of the season, Nhivi has been receiving a lot of flak from the Green Machine faithful after putting in below par performances.

However, Chitembwe has kept faith in the former Mamelodi Sundowns forward, who has now started in all the matches the Harare giants have played so far this season.

“He has always been performing by the way. He played today (Sunday) but the difference was the conversion and it explains why he played 90 minutes in all the games.

“He’s one kind of player that when he is not scoring, he gives us a lot of energy in defending; I’m happy for Simba. He was under a lot of pressure to score and he manage that.”

The Makepekepe coach was also pleased that his side was finally able to get their first set of three points following those three consecutive draws.

“The result at the end of the day was more important but in terms of the aspects of the game, we are getting there slowly,” Chitembwe said.

“We are not yet there but it’s encouraging that we keep on getting the results. But we are not yet where we want to be.”  DailyNews