Shaun Bartlett shares Cape Town Spurs ambitions upon topflight return

Spurs are back in the elite league after grabbing promotion at the second attempt via the play-offs, where they beat Casric Stars and Maritzburg United, after ending second in the Motsepe Foundation Championship behind winners Polokwane City.

Having begun pre-season on Monday, due to the late finish of the play-offs, Bartlett has set a loose target of where he would personally like to finish while highlighting the club's ambition to maintain their topflight status.

"I think from my side I've always maintained that we've gotta stabilise, don't get too excited about the first season in the Dstv [Premiership] and now you wanna just, let's go for top 4 and see if we can compete," Bartlett said.

"You gotta be realistic. Obviously, there are always gonna be expectations as to what we can do and what we can achieve. As a coach, I wanna go as high as possible. That's always been our target, even our players, we've said yesterday that this notion of playing away from home and then play for a draw is not really us, to be honest. 

"We've got that mentality and willingness to go and win games wherever we go and that's gonna be the same in the PSL. I've always said it's a mini-league within the league, so you've gotta choose eight or 10 teams where you know you can really compete against and get results.

"From that mini-league, you get as many points as possible and get yourself in that position even to end in the top 8."

The former Kaizer Chiefs assistant coach also pointed to Spurs' – formerly known as Ajax Cape Town – facilities and operation model as being perfectly suited to the Premiership, for which they now have only minor adjustments and additions to make.

"I've always maintained and said that this team on and off the field have been operating at that level already. I think there are very few clubs in this country that have facilities like we do. We have the resources," he added.

"We have a development structure that's unbelievable as far as a conveyer belt of players that we can utilise. We don't have to go outside and look for anything because you've got development under 18s. We've got an ABC [ABC Motsepe] team, we've been playing players in those teams that are 15/16 anyway. I've got a 17-year-old in my squad that played a couple of games last year in the NFD."