Siwelele set ambitious targets for new season

Siwelele coach Lehlohonolo Seema said his side have set their sights a lot higher for their second season in the Betway Premiership than their debut in the last campaign where they finished 10th, scored less than a goal per game and drew the most matches.

This season Siwelele plan to chase some silverware, said Seema, whose side started their league campaign at home in Bloemfontein on Sunday in a 2-2 draw with TS Galaxy.

“We definitely are not building. I mean, I think last season we were building, we wanted to survive and stay in the league. Now, we are putting furniture inside the house, and definitely, we want to improve everything that we had, all the data, and the position where we had last season, and we are quite aware of it,” he said.

Siwelele were three points off a top eight finish, scoring 24 goals and along with Marumo Gallants, Polokwane City and Richards Bay, drawing 13 of their 30 league fixtures.

Siwelele were also knocked out in the first round of both the Carling Knockout and Nedbank Cup.

“Our goal is to make sure that we finish in the top eight this season. That is the first one. And the second one is, if there's any cup that is played, we are not going to say, ‘No, we want to go out of the cup at the first stage’.

"We want to push as far as we can. I think our supporters need something that they can say, ‘Okay, they pushed’, and I'm sure every stage of any cup where we can progress, they'll be happy.

“And we know that we have to improve the number of draws that we had, because we are aware that had we turned the number of draws that we had last season into 1-0 scores, we’d be talking a different story.

“And we want to make sure that the away form, we improve it. We had a very poor away form season, and the next two games are away, and we're going to try and make sure that we improve that also.”

Siwelele are next in action on Tuesday, August 11 at newly promoted Milford and then AmaZulu on Saturday,16  August.

“And lastly, it is to score goals. So if we can do those things that we have identified in our team, we definitely will achieve our goal, which is to be in the top eight.

“Anything less than that, we have not achieved what we wanted. We want to improve each and every season, improve our position, improve on everything in terms of data that we had for the previous season,” Seema added.