Golden Arrows coach Vusimuzi Vilakazi believes conceding early in the first half was their undoing against Mamelodi Sundowns on Tuesday evening.
Abafana Besthende slumped to their first loss of the season a week after their maiden victory of the campaign against Richards Bay FC in the KwaZulu-Natal derby.
"Not one of the best games obviously. I think we started badly in terms of allowing Sundowns to score an early goal. By that time, we wanted to focus on our defensive structure then we lacked both aspects in terms of defensive and also offensive because of the goals we allowed," Vilakazi told SuperSport TV.
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"But I think maybe it's a lesson for us going forward. It just one day where I need to make players to still focus because there's still more games to come and take this game as a lesson to us in terms of making sure we don't concede an early goal.
"I think we failed to manage them in the first half to avoid…I know when you're playing against Sundowns the more you frustrate them by not scoring the better the chances are for you to win the game or to do better in the game.
"But today it was just something that was not meant to be, we were just terrible in both aspects defensively and also offensively but we'll go back to the drawing board and in terms of making sure we rectify a few aspects of our game going into our next game," Vilakazi continued.
With the score 3-0 at halftime, Abafana Besthende tried to affect the outcome through fresh faces from the bench but it wasn't to be as the Brazilians still dominated.
"We had a challenge in terms of defensive and also offensive play. So, we just wanted to try something else, I just told the players at halftime it can never be worse than what it is right now we just need to go back and try not to concede.
"Unfortunately, we conceded another goal in the second half but the structure defensively was much better. We could've done better because even playing wide we were able to combine five, six touches in the second half which is something we were struggling with in the second half.
"So, I think we will build on this one and take the positive out of it and rectify all the mistakes we've done today.
As of now, the aim is to bounce back against the newly-promoted Polokwane City over the weekend and furthermore make use of the fact that it's a home encounter.
"We will definitely have to redeem ourselves playing against them at home. We must take advantage of that and try to win the game and get the three points. What I've just said now we just don't need to look down, we just need to look forward and go for the next challenge and make sure that we do better."
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