City caught out by Stellies in derby

Cape Town City coach Eric Tinkler said his side were caught out by a predatory Stellenbosch in Tuesday’s derby in the DStv Premiership as they were toppled by the regional rivals from second place in the standings.

Devon Titus scored the first-half winner for Stellenbosch to complete a double over City in the league this season after also beating them at home in December.

“That's the frustrating part, it's always the same old problem against them. They obviously wait for your mistake and then they punish you,” said Tinkler after Tuesday’s game at the Cape Town Stadium.

“I think in the first 20 minutes, we controlled the match. We had chances but didn’t punish. And obviously, there's your problem. You've got to punish in those moments, you got to kill them off, but didn't simply kill them off, we didn't make the right decisions in the right areas.”

Tinkler said Titus, Iqraam Rayners and Anicet Oura were staying upfront for Stellenbosch. “Their function was purely to hit you on the counter. So when you go forward, and you don't take your chances, when you lose it, you press to win it back and get your defences sorted.

“Their chances came from that, and we’ve only got ourselves to blame. The fluidity in our game right now isn't there. We only saw glimpses of our potential for 15 minutes to 20 minutes in the first half. But there was a large period of the game where the fluidity was not there, the connection was not there.”

Tinkler said he would have to analyse what went wrong before their next match against Royal AM on Sunday.

“We're going to have to sit and analyse properly to try and fix it,” he added.