Popopo keeps faith in his men

Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
AFTER going for two weeks without a win, Mushowani Stars coach Paul “Popopo” Chimalizeni says they are just going through a bad patch which will pass with time in their World Navi Northern Region Division One soccer league campaign.
Mushowani went for eight weeks without losing a match before suffering a shock defeat to lowly Karoi United who dismissed them 3-1 as the competition entered Week Nine.

And that defeat to Karoi United seem to have shaken the former pacesetters as they went on to lose to Gunners over the weekend.

The defeat to Gunners saw them tumbling again on the log standings from second position and they are now occupying fourth place trailing the log Leaders, Bindura United, by five points and a point behind second-placed Gunners.

They share the same number of points with Flame Lily but they are a place behind on goal difference.

Chimalizeni said he remained optimistic of better results in the upcoming games.

“As a coach, losing two consecutive matches I should worry. It’s a bad patch and it’s going to pass but we should start winning this weekend against Royal Classics,” said Chimalizeni.

“Against Gunners we did not play badly, we created chances but I think it wasn’t our day.

“It’s a major drawback considering that we were not losing for the past eight games and suddenly lost two matches. It’s a blow to the team and you can look at where we are now on the log.”

He said he wasn’t going to change much and will stick to his usual game plan.

“We are not going to make many changes because the team was playing well, actually we are working on scoring and that was our weakness.

“Against Gunners we created chances but we could not convert. We cannot press the panic button, we just need to correct our mistakes. “Our position, it’s not bad yet because it’s still too early, we are in the top four teams and Bindura are just leading us by five points.

“We are not worried about the position on the log, what we need to do is to get back to our winning ways so that we keep on maintaining our position or do better than the teams on top.

“The bad patch came at the right time whereby we can recover and can go on top again,” said Chimalizeni.

Mushowani will lock horns with Royal Classics in the weekend fixtures and should start as favourites to bounce back to winning ways.