BY FORTUNE MBELE Harare City coach Taurai Mangwiro has attributed his team’s poor form to an exodus of players from the club, although he said he shoulders blame for any failure.
The Sunshine Boys lost 1-0 to Chicken Inn in a Castle Lager Premier Soccer League tie at Luveve Stadium in Rusape on Saturday to remain stuck in the relegation zone.
Mangwiro said he has lost key players along the way having started the season with a healthy squad that could fare well this season.
“We are sinking deeper and we need to rescue the ship from sinking. Some of the issues are technical and other external factors that perhaps I cannot control. You saw what was happening, the team that we prepared in pre-season and the team that we featured in the league and the time we thought we had gotten stable, we lost our best players: Emmanuel Mandiranga who was our leading goal scorer, Clive Rupiya and Collin Mujuru. These are players who were doing well for the team and we wanted to have them up to the end,” Mangwiro said.
Other players who left the side to join other teams include Marshall Machazane, Ben Musaka, William Manondo, Tatenda Tumba and Tatenda Tavengwa.
Asked what he meant by external forces affecting the team, Mangwiro said the performance of the team could be affected by administrative failures.
“I would shoulder the blame for the failure of the team to cross the finishing line, but there are other things which are not technical. Performances are affected by a number of things, others are administrative and others are social. If you look at our squad we had Jerry Chipangura who was one of us, he is not with us; where is he today? Players were staging demonstrations, failure to fulfil some of the promises that were made; it impacted negatively on the team. Some are even physical, so a lot of factors can affect the performance of the team,” he said.
Harare City have so far recorded just one victory in the second half of the season when the beat Triangle at home last month, drew one and lost five.
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They have only registered four wins from the start of the season, drew 10 and lost 10 and they hang precariously on position 15 on the log table with a paltry 22 points out of 24 games.
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