Tonderayi Ndiraya Encouraged by Chicken Inn Performance Despite Narrow Nyamhunga Defeat
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Chicken Inn FC coach Tonderayi Ndiraya has praised his team’s performance despite a narrow 1-0 defeat to ZPC Kariba in a Castle Lager Premier Soccer League Matchday 15 clash at Nyamhunga Stadium on Sunday.
The Gamecocks were undone by a first-half set-piece goal, but Ndiraya insisted there were strong positives to take from the display, highlighting effort, structure and determination from his players throughout the match.
“Despite losing i must say that this is probably 1 of our best performance so far this season its unfortunate that we ended up on the losing end but really i cannot take anything away from the players they gave everything today fought very hard,” he said.
He reflected on the moment that decided the match, noting how the set-piece situation was handled.
“It’s unfortunate that we conceded again, from what I thought. It was a silly free kick from our end, but again, if you look at where the free kick was conceded, far, far away from our goal, close to the center line, and then we didn’t pick up correctly at the edge of that box, and then Collin Muleya was left to just plant a header free into the net,” he explained.
The coach stressed that the team has been working to correct similar mistakes and remain competitive in tight matches.
“So similar fashion that we have been conceding goals this season, if we don’t concede from those scenarios, we make silly mistakes and then, in the end, we concede, but we keep our head high, especially the performance today,” he added.
Despite the result — their third defeat in a row — Ndiraya remained optimistic about the team’s direction and future performances.
“we are very confident that we can turn things around and start moving again its been a while that we have really been stagnant we really need to move forward and we are hoping that in our next game we can really do much better than we did today,” he said.
He added that the team is focusing on improving their attacking sharpness after a difficult run in front of goal.
“hopefully we can be a little bit sharper in front of goal so that we can score goals we have not scored goals in the past 3 games and that has led us into the situation that we find ourselves in but its something that we are running around to correct,” he said.
Ndiraya concluded by crediting ZPC Kariba for their discipline while reaffirming belief in his squad.
“and hopefully in our next fixture we can really be clinical we can really take shots so that we look for that elusive goal but overall good effort from the team and then of course credit to the home team they really did very well to defend their lead they were compact they defended up until the end but as for us we leave to fight another day”
After Matchday 15 results, Chicken Inn remain in 11th position on the league table with 18 points as they look to bounce back in their upcoming fixtures.
