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SuperSport United CEO Stan Matthews has responded to reports that club head coach Kaitano Tembo’s job is on the line following a spate of poor results.

SuperSport are said to be unhappy with the club’s recent string of poor results, which have seen them endure a nine-match winless run and drop to sixth spot on the log.

The Zimbabwean was appointed in 2018 and got off to an impressive start by claiming his first major honour as a head coach when he led the club to the MTN8 crown in 2019.

“Even though we’ve had a very bad run recently, Kaitano has done an excellent job of transitioning a team that plays more players under the age of 24 than any other club in the PSL,” Matthews tells KickOff.com.

“Kaitano has invested a significant amount of game time into our younger players, as we did with Ronwen at age 19, Tebza [Teboho Mokoena], [Luke] Fleurs and [Sipho] Mbule at age 18, and others.

“This will pay off for us as a club next season and beyond. So, while we are obviously disappointed with the way we’ve slipped out of contention [for the league title] after an excellent start, we also see a tremendous amount of progress in the club as a whole.

“Kaitano needs to be commended for having courage to give young players a chance, which we all know mostly leads to a sacrifice of short-term points while they pay their PSL school fees.

“We clearly have not shown the depth to sail smoothly through the injury storm we have had since February, especially losing Bradley [Grobler] and [Thamsanqa] Gabuza at the same time.

“I don’t know why some of the media wants to try place pressure on Kaitano, when the facts now are that, we cannot win the league and we also cannot be relegated.

“We have consciously decided to give some of the younger players game time, as well as assess who will and won’t be part of our set up come the new season.” – KickOff