Mamelodi Sundowns 3-0 Platinum Stars: Brilliant Billiat secures comfortable win for log leaders

Mamelodi Sundowns welcomed their four new signings with a routine win over Platinum Stars in a match which was played at Loftus Stadium.

All eyes were on Mosimane to see if he would unleash any of his recently signed stars, but the 53-year-old mentor opted to leave them on the bench, going for the tried and tested against a struggling Dikwena side.

With all the uncertainty over Khama Billiat’s future at the club, Mosimane gave the Zimbabwean forward a start alongside Percy Tau upfront, and he never disappointed, perhaps because he knows that he needs to be at his best if he’s to attract more interest from outside the country.

The 27-year-old certainly gave Mosimane no reason to drop him as the battle for his signature continues. 

Hlompho Kekana was the only surprising exclusion in the starting line-up, but the decision to leave the skipper on the bench didn’t backfire at all as Sundowns strolled to an easy win.

Sibusiso Vilakazi opened the floodgates with a beautiful curler 22 minutes into the game. This came after he was afforded acres space to run through four defenders, before beating Dino Visser from outside the box for his second goal of the season.

Dikwena’s game plan was clearly to try and stop Sundowns from scoring in the opening 15 minutes of the game; simply because 25 percent of Sundowns’ 28 goals prior to this encounter had come during that period.

However, Roger de Sa and his technical team failed to read between the lines as their defence made two mistakes outside the box within the space of five minutes. 

Billiat took full advantage of the two situations, and turned the resulting free-kicks into goals. He struck cleanly two minutes after the half-hour mark, before completing his brace in similar fashion five minutes later.

The two goals saw Billiat increase his tally to five, and two behind teammates Tau, who continues to lead the club’s goalscoring charts despite not being a natural striker.  

While the entire Dikwena defence will have to shoulder the blame for not doing enough to protect their goalkeeper, fingers will also point to Visser for his poor positioning and inability to organize a solid wall.

Prior to this game, Sundowns had not scored three goals in the opening half, meaning De Sa’s men needed a miracle to launch a comeback in the second 45 minutes.

De Sa made two changes at the start of the second half, introducing Robert Ng’ambi and Bonginkosi Ntuli, but the duo did little to influence the outcome of the game.

History was always against Dikwena, because they had not beaten Sundowns in their seven previous meetings, with this being their eighth match with tasting victory over the former African champions.  

Midway through the second 45 minutes, Mosimane unleashed three of his new signings in Aubrey Ngoma, Gaston Sirino and Jeremy Brockie, but at the time, it was just a matter of giving them minutes on the pitch.

In fact, Brockie, who hasn’t really been scoring goals on a regular basis this season, should have registered his name on the scoresheet very late in the game, only to fire wide of Visser's goal from distance.

Sundowns were on another level throughout the game, and their blistering start to the encounter, saw them run away with all the points and maintain their four-point lead at the top of the log.

For Dikwena, this was a punch below the belt as they remain rooted at the bottom of the table with 15 points from 18 games, and the next 12 league games will be crucial if they’re to beat the drop.

Things looked promising for them towards the end of last year and at the start of 2018, but it's back to the drawing board for them as reality is starting to hit home that they need more quality players to compete with the best in the league.