Bartlett: Home games crucial to promotion bid

Cape Town Spurs head coach Shaun Bartlett feels it is vital that we make home advantage count during the second half of the GladAfrica Championship season in a bid to challenge for promotion.

The Urban Warriors return to action on Saturday after the extended mid-season break with a trip to Mpumalanga, where they will face TS Sporting before playing three matches in the Mother City.

Two of those are home games against Free State Stars and Jomo Cosmos, while the third is a local derby with Cape Town All Stars. Spurs then travel to Gauteng for their next two encounters against JDR Stars and Platinum City Rovers.

With just four home fixtures remaining for the club, Bartlett says it is crucial to pick up maximum points to give his side a chance of pushing for a top-three finish.

We are currently eight points adrift of the promotion places in 11th spot with 13 matches left to play, but the coach is confident of achieving his aim to get Spurs back into the top tier of South African football.

“We’ve got a target, we’ve got a goal that we want to achieve. As a team, as players and as a head coach you always want to make success of your season and for me it would be ideal to get into a play-off spot or even automatic promotion,” Bartlett said.

“Everybody can say it’s impossible but I think with the quality we have in our squad and hopefully also what we will show on the field we’ll be able to get results.

“I’m under no illusion it will be easy. We’ve got 13 games left, eight of those games are away from Cape Town so we’ve got to make sure we gather as many points as possible at home.

“I think victories will be vital for us as far as home games are concerned and when we do travel is to ensure we do not concede too many goals to give ourselves a chance of actually winning games.

“For us as a club and as a squad we want to make sure that we start on a very good note and the first four games of which three of them are in Cape Town we are hoping to get at least three victories from that and see how close we can get to the top four or five teams as far as points are concerned.

“The club has really supported us in whatever we want to do and going forward we want to make sure we repay that by getting as close as possible, if not into the play-off or automatic promotion places.”