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Cape Town - Orlando Pirates coach Eric Tinkler saw plenty of room for improvement following a goalless draw with bottom-of-the-table Maritzburg United at Orlando Stadium on Saturday.
The Buccaneers were unable to break down the relegation battlers, who produced a gritty performance on the night to claim a share of the spoils with Tinkler's side.
And Tinkler admitted in his post-match interview that his players weren't able to play their usual game, which he felt was the reason they were forced to settle for a point.
However, Tinkler did have words of praise for the Team of Choice, saying they were unlucky to find themselves locked in a relegation battle.
"They are a team that I feel has actually performed very well since the turn of the year, they've just been slightly unlucky with some of the results," he said in his post-match interview.
"They're not an easy team to break down and beat. They came out here and made a game of it and made it extremely difficult.
"First-half we had one or two chances but we couldn't string two or three passes together in the first half and our full-backs in this game should have had a lot of time and space out wide but we weren't utilising that.
"Also we weren't putting the ball in the box enough times, we were getting into the wide areas but then not looking to put the ball in the box, we were looking for another pass and making things very difficult for ourselves.
"Second half we created one or two chances, Gabuza should have done a lot better with a chance that he put over the crossbar and then Gift had one very late in the game but they had their chances.
"Possible penalty for them, possible penalty for us, but I don't want to go into detail about that.
"We matched them for effort tonight but we didn't play our game, and we need to play our game because that's what makes us strong."
