What went wrong?

What went wrong?

Last week saw our beloved flames take on the black stars of Ghana, in a hope to return to the Africa cup of nations.

Most of us had high hopes for that match (at least a draw would have been enough), you know   playing us at home they (the black stars) can’t stand against us or can they?

However all our hopes were dashed by the Africans second high ranked team with the much deserved two nil victory, so I will try to look back into that game and see what went wrong.

In first place, I would not be doing any justice by staring my analysis on how we played, before looking at our squad which traveled to Accra. Let me be fair here that, as a young and upcoming football pundit, I knew that the squad which traveled to Ghana was a very lighter squad (it had no depth).

Coach Kinnah Phiri, has been receiving criticism over his tendency of picking in active players when assembling his squad, many pundits have criticized the coach over this issue and it seems the coach still is not showing any signs of improvement. Last week we paid the price of our coach’s lack of flexibility on changing his stance.

Let’s look in the squad which traveled with the coach, we had players like Dave Banda, who has not even kicked a ball this season at club level and has returned home from south Africa to kick start his career, but coach Kinnah Phiri still managed to give him a place in the starting eleven and he was paired with frank Banda in the middle of the park (midfield).

Frank himself has struggled for form since his move from civo to silver strikes and has been sidelined to the bench at his club.

The other players are peter Wadabwa, jimmy Zakazaka and Atusaye Nyondo. Nyondo has not been a regular feature in the super sport United’s squad. While the other two  Peter Wadabwa and jimmy Zakazaka, it has been much of the same story, they are struggling to find game time in South Africa, but yet Kinnah afforded to grant them a place in the plane to Accra. To make matters worse, four of the discussed players started in the game against Ghana.

The other miss for our coach, was his lack of timing to make substitutions. The coach decided to start robin ngalande and Gabadinho Mhango on the bench for the reasons which he is well aware of and I am not going to argue much on that, but I will base my argument on his lack of timing to bring on the two exciting youngsters early on in the game.

The dynamic duo, changed the game when they were introduced and they were more effective in the game than the two players which they replaced (frank Banda and peter Wadabwa).the two players which the duo replaced had a very quite game, But the coach’s substitution came too little too late for the deficit to be reduced.

Finally, the final point is what I personally believe that it is a major contributor to our disappointing run. The frames are experiencing a bad spell; our team has now turned to be a predictable side, that if they have not lost a game then probably that match has been drawn. Such has been the poor form of our beloved team.

So this has given me this idea that maybe coach Kinnah Phiri has run out of ideas and is failing to replicate his 2010 magic, when he guided us to our first afcon qualifier? Which local coach do you think would save the flames?

What do others think?