Cape Town - FC Cape Town plan to sign at least six players in the coming transfer window to shore up their leaky defence and arrest their slide down the NFD table.
The African Beasts haven't won in six games, playing to two draws and four defeats, and are 13th on the log. Head coach Johnny Ferreira says his defence is the area with the greatest need for reinforcement.
“We have to reinforce during the break. We have to bring in two very good, experienced central defenders. So we are not going to go for a young central defender with pace. We are going to look for someone with experience, who has been around the block, someone with good work ethic,” he said.
“We’ll also reinforce the goalkeeping department with one player, we’ll reinforce central midfield with a holding midfielder and two strikers who are very experienced as well. So the six players we are going to recruit in January will all have been around the block. They will have pedigree of experience.”
Ferreira hasn't yet identified any targets, but he expects to look outside of South Africa for the defenders and forwards.
“We’ll go out of South Africa and I think and go into West Africa to see if we can’t recruit two big beasts from Nigeria or Ivory Coast or somewhere like that,” he said.
Poor defence has undoubtedly been FC Cape Town’s main failing thus far. The Parow side has conceded 24 goals in just 12 games - the highest in the league and two more than last-placed Magesi FC.
They are also tied with 15th-placed Cape Town All Stars for the second-lowest goal difference in the league - on minus seven and trailing only Magesi.
Ferreira’s men conceded 17 of those goals in their last six games, and suffered a 4-2 defeat to Milano United at Athlone Stadium in their last fixture.
However, the African Beasts have also managed to score 17 goals, which is more than eight of the teams positioned above them and the fourth highest in the league.
Ferreira, who’s in his first full season in charge of the club, says injuries forced him to play three Under-23 defenders in his backline against Milano.
“The goalkeeper was disappointing and two of the three Under-23s were very disappointing. When you concede four goals away from home you don’t deserve to win and on the flip side, if you score four goals at home you do deserve to win,” Ferreira said.
“Our defence has been our Achilles heel all season. Even last season when I joined the club in December, we conceded five against Black Leopards and five against AmaZulu.
“If you don’t keep you backdoor closed you are going to stare down a double-barrel shotgun, but we are working on it. We will reshuffle our back line this week and use more tried-and-tested players. They may not be as fast and mobile, but they will be far more experienced.”
The former Mpumalanga Black Aces assistant coach believes the main chink in FC Cape Town’s armour has been an inability to stop crosses from coming into the box and clear the danger when they do.
They will hope to turn the corner when they host fourth-placed Witbank Spurs at NNK Stadium on Saturday (3.30pm kickoff).
Cape Times