Staff Reporter.
Kaizer Chiefs coach Stuart Baxter is not sure how many of the club’s new signings will start Sunday’s MTN8 tie against Mamelodi Sundowns but predicts a few of the new faces will get their club debuts in the quarterfinal tie at Atteridgeville.
“It’s difficult to say right now. Everybody has a bit of a different starting point, in terms of when they come in, how much experience they have had with me before, “he told a news conference on Wednesday.
“A player like Cole Alexander has had me as a coach before, some of the lads had me in the national team and some of the lads were here in my first stint, so everybody has a little bit of different starting point.
“Training will tell us in our preparations who is putting their hands up and who needs a little more time, due to maybe fitness or otherwise.
“I think there will be some changes but I don’t think there will be wholesale changes given that we have signed a few players.”
“In terms of injuries, Lebo Manyama did his first training with the team. It doesn’t mean he is fit but fit enough to train. We’ve got the ones that are injured long-term, Leo Castro, Dumisani Zuma,” Baxter said.
“We’ve got a few other ones that came back late from the Olympics. We’ve got a couple of injuries and we have the players that have taken part in the training. We know they had enough rest, they’ve done structural training with us.”
Baxter has been with the club from before the end of the last campaign and his first match in charge was the African Champions League final against Al Ahly on July 17.
Chiefs players were given five days off after that before going back to training and so have effectively been back for that last fortnight.
Baxter said the time given of to the players was “probably not enough physically, but everybody was chopping at the bit a little and wanted to get in and work for the new season”.
Baxter said the impact of the extended previous season, which ran a month over because Chiefs reached the Champions League final, was that they had not been able to complete all the work they had wanted to do before this weekend’s kick off of the new campaign.