Under pressure, Nasreddine Nabi throws in the towel on a top-three finish

Nabi was commenting after watching his side labouring to a one-all draw against TS Galaxy in a Betway Premiership match played at the New Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane last night.

Chiefs are eighth on the log, six points behind Galaxy in the third spot, but there are teams above them with two games in hand.

That's another reason for Nabi to be doubtful about their chances.

"About finishing in the top three, I feel that we need to take it game by game and it's true that we have to be honest, it's gonna be very difficult because we are losing or we have lost points where we probably shouldn't have lost those points but we're gonna take it game by game and go all in and see how and where we finish the league," Nabi said.

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After taking the lead in the first half, through Wandile Duba’s fifth league goal of the season, Chiefs squandered numerous goal-scoring chances. 

It was until Mlungisi Mbunjana equalised for the Rockets nine minutes from full-time. Nabi says this is a frustrating result.

"It's a frustrating game where we feel that we controlled the game, especially in the first half. In the second half maybe the opponent was pushing more but we feel that we could have killed the game early because the times where the opponent was dangerous was on set pieces but even on the goal that they scored through a corner, we were making changes to bring Tashreeq Morris and George Matlou to give us height in those kind of situations but unfortunately even the corner, it was one of our players that hit the ball and almost scored against us,” the coach explained.

“In the end, it's a frustrating game and we feel that it's a game that we wanted very badly to get the three points and we feel that we had the opportunity to get those three points, but we ended up with one point."

Chiefs play Mamelodi Sundowns in the Nedbank Cup semifinals; a loss in this game could invite trouble for the Tunisian-born head coach.