BONGANI MALUNGA
Extension Gunners suffered their second successive defeat of the 2019/2020 BTC Premiership Season this past weekend at the hands of Gilport Lions at the UB Stadium. The latest defeat follows their opening day loss against Township Rollers, the two defeats for the Peleng giants have seen a common theme occur and that theme has been their undoing.
Stanley Mwaanga’s charges usually make slow starts to games and that has seen their opponents steal a march on them and command the game a lot earlier, this has let to Gunners playing “catch-up”. A case in point was their first game against Rollers whereby they conceded a goal in the first half, earlier in the second half they conceded two own goals.
The concession of the goals seemed to spark a late surge from Gunners as they scored two late goals to come within a goal of securing a draw but that was not meant to be as Rollers held on to secure the victory. This past weekend, the same theme occurred as they were undone by two first half goals from Gilport Lions.
Gunners conceded a penalty as Mbabali Nasir fouled Serati Semadi during a goal mouth scramble, Semadi dusted himself off and took the resultant penalty, his effort was saved by Itumeleng Selapa but he was fortunate enough to score from the rebound as the parried save made its way to him.
Moments after the restart, Gunners were caught napping as they lost possession in the opposition half after sloppy play, this saw them disorganized as Gilport Lions launched a counter attack and the pacey Tshepang Molefe scored a second goal for them.
Gunners were strong in terms of stringing passes together from the back but they lacked rhythm, cohesion and composure in the final third of the pitch. The second half was a lot better for Gunners and their countless efforts to reduce the deficit were rewarded late in the game as Obonye Moswate scored to give his side hope of staging a late comeback. Once again, Gunners had left it too late as they lost the game.
Gunners are currently in the relegation zone and their two defeats are made worse by their original negative points (-6) tally which resulted from their failure to comply with club licensing requirements.