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Cape Town - Both Khama Billiat and Percy Tau will be walking the suspension tightrope for Mamelodi Sundowns when the Pretoria team hosts Baroka FC on Wednesday night.
The league encounter at the Lucas Moripe Stadium is set for a 19:30 kick off and is a game Sundowns must win in order to remain in the title race as they currently trail pacesetters Bidvest Wits by three points, with three matches to play.
Neither team has any suspensions for Wednesday's showdown in Tshwane, but Billiat and Tau, arguably the Brazilians' two most influential players, are both on three yellow cards and as such are one booking away from a suspension their team can ill afford at this stage of the season.'Downs left-back Fares Hachi will be available again after serving his ban.
While Sundowns are doing their all to defend their league title, Baroka are desperate not to be relegated after only one season in the top flight.
They go into the match second from bottom of the standings in 15th, although only three points behind 12th placed Bloemfontein Celtic on a tight table.
Recent form has not been good though, Bakgaga only claiming two points from the last possible nine, while on the other side, Sundowns beat Pirates 2-0 on the weekend after having drawn with Platinum Stars and lost to Bidvest Wits before that.
Sundowns mentor Pitso Mosimane will be feeling positive after being impressed by his team’s showing against the Buccaneers, though he has tried to downplay Downs' title chances.
"I'm happy we won, but we didn’t just win, we played well, we played very well. We got our chances and we finished them," he said on Sunday.
"We can't worry about Wits because it [the title] is not in our hands. If it was in our hands, we could worry about it."
Baroka midfielder Mxolisi Kunene says it's up to the players to pull together and help the club escape the drop. He also cautioned against conceding late goals."There is no game that I can say is easy because everybody is fighting for their lives now. If we support each other and play as a team, we can win the remaining games," he told Sport24."It is going to be difficult. We are in a bad position and we have to fight each and every game. As a team we have to double the effort."We have been conceding in dying minutes in the last few games. When we were playing Pirates, we conceded in the last seconds of the game. The same thing happened against Bloemfontein Celtic. The coach is trying to fix that."
