Loyo Stars head coach Raymond ‘Steeze’ Khuzwayo has had a rough start to the Hollywoodbets Regional League season.

His opening match against The Boys FC was promising, securing three points with a 2–1 victory. What followed, however, was a series of losses that turned that good opening into a patchy battle to regain momentum. First, Loyo Stars suffered a 1–2 defeat to Raiders FC, then a 1–5 loss to Gomtown Boyz FC.

Khuzwayo attributed the team’s struggles to the absence of the main players who carried Loyo Stars into the top four last season. The current squad, he said, is yet to find its chemistry on the field. “We are in a rebuilding stage. If you check, from our last season’s top-four finish, we had three players from that squad who were actually in the first line-up,” he said. “We are still a bit far from getting the right combination.”

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With six points already gone, the pressing question is whether Khuzwayo and his coaches can fix these problems quickly enough to find their rhythm before conceding more points, which could spell trouble for their ambition of winning the league. “It is a huge challenge ahead of us as coaches and the technical team. I think we have a huge mountain to climb. It is going to be very hectic,” he said.

Reflecting on their recruitment of some of the current players, Khuzwayo said it was based on style of football, and they have got that right. They just need to work on the final third.

Last week, Loyo Stars’ coach Vukile ‘Vido’ Ngcongo also admitted that the team needed to improve its finishing and develop strikers who will thrive in the final third. However, having conceded five goals against Gomtown, reported as the most any team has conceded this season in the yellow stream, Khuzwayo admitted that defence also needs work.

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He said the backline was a new pairing and the players had never played together before. “They have never even played a friendly together. I think that was the biggest issue, and our left back is actually a left winger. We also have a lot of injuries that I think impacted the game very much,” he said.

He noted, however, that this was not an excuse, as the players, especially with the experience of Luyanda Shazi among others, ought to have known how to communicate.

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