Shaun Bartlett criticises Kaizer Chiefs’ inconsistency despite strong Premiership position
Shaun Bartlett criticised Kaizer Chiefs’ inconsistency in performance and player selection despite their strong fourth-place position in the Betway Premiership, highlighting challenges with dual coaching and the need for management to address these issues swiftly. Picture: Michael Sherman/IOL
Image: Michael Sherman/IOL
Former Afcon winner Shaun Bartlett has lamented the inconsistency of Kaizer Chiefs again this season.
Though Chiefs are well-placed on the Betway Premiership table going into the Christmas break in fourth place, the Soweto Giants have drawn six of their 13 games in the league so far.
In fact, they’ve drawn the same number of games that they’ve won.
It’s no surprise though, given that Chiefs have scored just 13 goals in as many games in the league.
Kaizer Chiefs: Battling Inconsistency in Performance and Player Selection
“Yeah, you know when I think about Kaizer Chiefs it’s only one word that comes to mind. Every time I speak about them it’s inconsistency,” Bartlett told IOL in an exclusive interview.
“They give you that little bit of hope of winning two games, and then suddenly they go a bit off track and they struggle for form again. So I think that that is the biggest challenge they have at this moment in time.
“Also inconsistency in the selection of players because they never find their strongest 11 in order to sustain, or to keep them going.
“So it’s a problem.”
Challenges of Dual Coaching with Khalil Ben Youssef and Cedric Kaze at Chiefs
It’s also quite evident that having two co-coaches in Khalil Ben Youssef and Cedric Kaze is not ideal. That’s because Nasreddine Nabi left the club midway through the season, just as Chiefs’ fortunes seemed to be changing.
“With the coaching staff it's going to be a massive challenge for them to compete for anything if you're going to keep changing players and keep changing coaches, so it's one of those things I think management will have to really put their thumb on and make sure that they correct things quickly.
“Coaches know that results will keep their jobs and that's an unfortunate thing. We probably would want them to stay for a year or two years, or have success, but at the end of the day even now with Nabi we saw having won the Nedbank Cup for them after 10 years not winning anything still didn't keep his job.
“It's very unfortunate, but I think coaches also understand that it's a very volatile position to have in this industry.”