Baxter: Quality was missing against Rockets

Kaizer Chiefs head coach Stuart Baxter felt a lack of quality led to their downfall in the Nedbank Cup after TS Galaxy emerged 1-0 victors at the FNB Stadium on Saturday evening.

Augustine Chidi Kwem’s 54th-minute goal decided the cup-tie as Amakhosi failed to progress beyond the round of 32 for a second consecutive season, having lost to Richards Bay at the same stage last year.

Chiefs failed to take any of their chances on the night and were indebted to Brandon Petersen for keeping them in the contest after he made two fine saves in the first half to deny Lifa Hlongwane and Lindokuhle Mbatha.

Baxter expressed his disappointment that the Soweto giants allowed the Rockets a foothold in the game due to an increasing amount of mistakes, which prevented his side from building momentum.

“To sum the game up in one point we didn’t play at any time with the quality that we have. I’ve looked at our training this week and it’s been first class and I was certain that we would give a better performance than that,” the Englishman said in the post-match press conference.

“But when you’re playing cup football you’ve got to build momentum, you’ve got to take the initiative, you’ve got to have your opponents on the back foot and we made far too many technical errors to build that momentum.

“After the first 10 minutes we were on the front foot and we played with a little bit of structure but then I’m sure that after the first 10 minutes it sort of subsided that Galaxy felt they were in the game because the more mistakes we made and the more they got hold of the ball, the more they could get up the field into our last third the more they felt they could get something tonight.

“At no time during the game did we play consistently with that sort of quality that you needed and that’s very disappointing.”