Mamelodi Sundowns peaking at the right time - Manqoba Mngqithi

Following an indifferent start to the season, having lost twice in the MTN8 and once in the Betway Premiership already, The Brazilians have shown glimpses of their dominance of old by beating Kaizer Chiefs 4-0 and Cape Town City 3-0 recently. 

With the CAF Champions League group stage set to commence later this month, Mngqithi is happy with this turnaround.

"We wanted to peak around this time. We did not want to arrive at this time with most of these players having a lot of games behind their backs,"

"And we are very excited that most of these players have been rotated a lot, and they've not really had so much load in their legs, so we are hoping we will be able to sustain these football actions.

"Which is why I was demanding a little bit more consistency from how we approached the game after we scored the first two or three goals – I saw we were going to being sluggish and slow, and playing just to kill time.

"But it is impressive to see most of our players really showing the quality that they are showing, and we are hoping that will help us because we are arriving at a stage where we really wanted to have most of our players not having played that much."

Meanwhile, with Sundowns’ three defeats this season having all come when captain Ronwen Williams was absent through injury, Mngqithi acknowledged the Ballon d’Or nominee’s quality but refused to look down on the club’s other goalkeepers.

"It's a tough one because we know his quality, but I also think Denis [Onyango] had a very good game against Polokwane City before he got a red card, and Jody [February] had some sterling saves against Stellenbosch," he added.

"But Ronwen is Ronwen, and probably not just from a playing side, I think he's also a very good leader within the group, and we appreciate it when he does things the way he does, but I wouldn't want to nullify the contribution of the other keepers because I think they played very well.

"We made a lot of mistakes from the in-field players, there's no game where you can say, 'This goal was scored because the goalkeeper was not of the best quality,' but it was merely poor defensive actions and we got punished."

READ: Chiefs youngsters should be protected - Manqoba Mngqithi