Vaz Pinto: Gor Mahia must be good in every chapter to beat Posta Rangers

Gor Mahia coach Carlos Manuel Vaz Pinto has called on his players to concentrate harder when they face Posta Rangers in an FKF Premier League match on Wednesday.

The Kenyan champions will play one of their four matches in hand when they host the Mailmen and the game comes three days after they suffered a 2-0 defeat against KCB at the same venue.

The defeat also turned out to be the fifth K’Ogalo have suffered in the 2020-21 campaign, leaving the team with a mountain to climb to retain the title.

Ahead of the match, the Portuguese tactician has termed the fixture as a must-win but warned his players they will have to concentrate to pull off the result they want.

“Today [Wednesday] we play again; the game is overdue for the championship,” Vaz Pinto told the club’s social media pages.

“It’s a game we have to concentrate on to pull a win…we will have to win the duel; we have to be more intense than the opponents. We have to work hard and be better in every chapter of the game.”

On Tuesday, Vaz Pinto received a vote of confidence from the team’s management after they said they will support him and dismissed reports they had parted ways with the coach.

Omondi Aduda, who sits in the team’s technical committee as a member, has told Goal: “We have not fired the coach, those are just rumours, what I can tell you is that on Monday we held a meeting which lasted for five hours and discussed all the technical aspects and the problems they bench is facing.

“We realised we still have 22 matches to play for before the season comes to an end, because Tusker who are topping the table have played 15 games and we have played three less, so for us we don’t see any reason for our fans to start panicking, it is not the time to start panicking.

“It is still too early to start talking about surrendering the title, you cannot give away the title in the first round, we have only played 13 matches, and to say we have lost the title is not true.

“We have resolved to support the coach, we will give him full support to help him do his work and we know soon the team will return to the top of the table, for now Vaz Pinto is going nowhere and we urge the fans to support the team.”

The two teams have met 16 times in the history of the league, K’Ogalo have won eight times, the Mailmen have won just once while six games have ended in draws.

However, the last two games have ended in 1-1 draws and Gor Mahia have scored 23 goals against Rangers and conceded 12 in the process.