FCB Nyasa Big Bullets will be on the road for our third TNM Super League fixture away to Mafco FC at Chitowe Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
The People’s Team will leave Blantyre for Dwangwa on Friday and head coach, Kalisto Pasuwa, spoke to the club media before the trip.
He spoke about the opposition, injuries, combinations and mental aspects of his players travelling for our sixth fixture of this new campaign.
Here is what Pasuwa said…
On facing a winless opposition
The first thing is the mindset. We need to correct our mindset. Remember, every team that we play against try to do their best to frustrate us. Last year, we had Red Lions and when we were looking for points, everyone would predict us to go and collect all three points but they made us run and we ended up coming with a point. So, Mafco is a team which has also been giving us a torrid time when we are playing them in Chitowe. But we need to be positive in whatever we do even when the game starts. And we hope that on the other side of officiation, everything will be okay just because some of the games that we are playing away from home we’re having this problem of officiation.
On trying different combinations
Our main worry is trying different players to come into the team. If you can look, every game we are playing, we are losing three to four players to injuries. Like in this [previous] game [against Mighty Mukuru Wanderers on Saturday], we had Ephraim Kondowe who got injured and is in POP, we have Clyde Senaji who was elbowed twice and has swollen eyes and we have Ronald Chitiyo who is also not okay [after he was badly challenged]. We also have Kesten Simbi who has an ankle problem [after picking up an injury during training]. So, if you see, some of the changes that we make every time with the injuries, you are forced to make changes so that we can have a full team playing, but that’s what football is all about. We will do our best and try as much as we can to have the points coming.
On the slow start to the season
Like I always tell you to say football is all about how you prepare yourselves in pre-season. Football is all about your take off and we are in a race that we are running and if one prepares himself, he trains to take off, he will take off very well. We started slowly but again, we still have a lot of injured players from last season and some of them are still not yet back. We also have a lot of new guys who just joined us and we are trying to gel to come up with a complete team. I also spoke about injuries coming in every time we play and this is affecting us. We will do our best, but so far, everything is alright although we need to push a little further to be on par with others.
