OPINION – Zinnbauer needs to find his best Orlando Pirates side

Like many of our football people, I am pretty shocked by the lack of consistency at a well off club like Pirates, a team that boasts  some of the top talents currently playing in the DStv Premiership.

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 Bucs fans were excited about the future of the club seeing the amount of activity by the team in the beginning of the 2020/2021 season.

Let’s be honest, the Buccaneers went in very hard during the first transfer window and brought in some quality players in their quest for a successful season.

Well, let me say the spending did work out as Pirates won the MTN8 trophy, their first piece of silverware in seven years. That was definitely a sign of good things to come.

Their league campaign, however, hasn’t been running as smoothly as anticipated, with Pirates winning just three of nine Premiership games in 2021.

I believe the main problem for Pirates is their injury list. Gabadinho Mhango, the Buccaneers top scorer last season, got injured in the first two games of the new campaign. And while he has returned since then, the Malawian hasn’t really been himself.

To make up for the absence of Mhango, it seems, Pirates make changes each and every game, but it compounds their problems. Don’t get me wrong. I know some changes are forced by injuries, but some are just unreasonable.

There has been a lot of changes upfront for the Soweto club, with Zakhele Lepasa at some point being trusted to lead the attack, while Tshegofatso Mabasa would chip in here and there.

However, both players haven’t proved themselves as regular goalscorers, having shown potential in their beginning stages of their Pirates careers.

I believe one of the reasons for their failure to stand up and be regarded as lethal goal poachers is not been given enough time to build on their confidence. But hey, I’m not a coach and maybe for Josef Zinnbauer three to four games is enough to prove yourself.

Just like Mhango, both Lepasa and Mabasa are now nursing injuries and that will definitely derail their progress while Terrence Dzukamanja is also trying to fit in at the club.

The striking department hasn’t been the only thing Zinnbauer has been rotating. There has also been a lot of changes in midfield and at the back. That alone brings us a lot of questions, – is he still trying to figure out his trusted first line-up? or is it a matter of giving players a rest? I don’t know.

Anyway, let me just put it out there, I believe the German mentor is still trying to figure out his best team but he doesn’t really have enough time to do that because some teams at the top of the table continue to yield results and the gap is expanding in the race for the c title.

About 16 games in the league have already passed and Pirates should really be a well-oiled machine right now, getting positive results week in week out with the kind of players they have.

They have shown in some games, like against Tshakuma Tsha Madzivhandila and more recently against Kaizer Chiefs that they are competitive.

Now it is just a matter of Zinnbauer and his technical team picking a team that will fight on for the rest of the season and produce the results they need before it’s too late. After all, we all know that football fans, particularly at a big club like Pirates, are not patient.

My advice to Zinnbauer is, choose your best team and let them fight for the league title and stop messing around with what is working. Because I sometimes think he is doing some players a favour by playing them.

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