NEWS: Gavin Hunt insists football gods favouring Orlando Pirates as SuperSport United aim for a top-four finish

Hunt is aware that a Caf Champions League spot is unlikely for Matsatsantsa A Pitori while suggesting the football gods have been smiling on Stellenbosch and Orlando Pirates – who are embroiled in a battle to be Mamelodi Sundowns’ bridesmaid.

“Pirates are winning easily now, let’s be fair. In the game on Sunday (against Royal AM), they should have been 3-0 down before they scored. They get [questionable] penalties.

“They cross the ball and it goes into the far post (Kabelo Dlamini’s goal). They received a penalty against AmaZulu, you know, good luck to them. We are not having that. Stellenbosch scored in the second minute (against Golden Arrows), we have not had that.

“Sometimes you have to work a little harder to earn your stripes. It is a learning curve for this young team.

“We have a pattern in the team and the young players have to understand that, it is different from where they were playing. They don’t have the endurance and they have to learn. They learnt in Africa,” said Hunt. 

READ: ‘We are dominating games’ – Jose Riveiro delighted as in-form Orlando Pirates hitting best form at crucial stage of campaign

SuperSport’s woes this year have been compounded by a goalscoring crisis as they harbour hopes of finishing in the top four.

“It has been a frustrating period because we have not been scoring goals. We played the first game of the year against City and we did not score and that does not give you any momentum.

“Even when we lost 4-0 to Stellies, we had three chances in the first half and if we had played the pass we would have scored. When you score, everybody ups their alertness and intensity, so scoring goals has been a big problem for us,” Hunt added.

“I put Bradley Grobler on the bench and I have been taking him out because his head is off, so I said to him let’s start off the bench and he came in and scored. Sometimes you’ve got to do that. He is a good professional.

“We just want more points and try to finish off well, we have tough games. The people we are playing against are all playing for something and we are playing for something. If we can, we want to finish in the top four, which will be overachieving.”

SuperSport next host Sekhukhune United on Tuesday in a shootout for fourth position in the DStv Premiership with just a point separating the two sides.

Kick-off is at 19:30.