Kaizer Chiefs head coach Arthur Zwane has revealed his thinking behind the early substitution of the club's star attacker Kgaogelo Sekgota in their 2-1 loss to Chippa United on Saturday.
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Despite being one of the club's standout performers this campaign, Zwane has maintained that Sekgota is not guaranteed game time if he does not perform.
The 25-year-old was yanked off in the 57th minute and was replaced by Khama Billiat as Chiefs went in search of a second goal in the match.
Considering that Sekgota has been an ever-present for Amakhosi this season, the decision by Zwane caught a few supporters by surprise.
But speaking to the media after the match, Zwane explained the reason behind his decision, saying that Sekgota was off colour in the match at the Moses Mabhida Stadium and had to be persevered for their upcoming matches against TS Galaxy and then AmaZulu in the MTN8 Semi-final second leg. "Look if you watched the game properly, you'll see that he didn't have a good game. It was key for us that if one of your key players is not doing well at that moment, you don't want him to get to a situation where his confidence is down, and he can't even come back. We still need him for the next game, we still need him for the cup game, we will be here [in Durban] next week so and also trying to create competition," Zwane told journalists.
"He must know that if he doesn't perform, he must know that there's another player on the bench"
"I think Khama came on and he did well. He created a number of chances for us and when you compare Kgaogelo [in] the first half, we know that he can do better and the chances that were missed and created by Khama, it shows that on another day we could have buried those chances, which is what was lacking at that moment. So I'm not very worried, I know that he's working very, very hard, he's a focused boy and today it was not his day so we had to pull him out and give other players the opportunity as well and he's one of the players has played almost all the games, so it might be the number of games and the games are coming thick and fast, maybe the body has taken too much so we had to rest him," he concluded.
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