With two games left in the DStv Premiership season, Kaizer Chiefs sit eighth in the league table. If we look at their basic defensive stats, they have conceded 28 goals to give them just the ninth best defensive record across the division. Some three years into his career at Chiefs, Njabulo Ngcobo has still not established himself. In fact, he is quite clearly sitting fourth in the central defensive pecking order. Should Amakhosi renew his contact? How is his competition performing? Has the time come to accept that the 2020/21 PSL Defender of the Season won’t be seen at his best level again? In this feature, we delve into the Kaizer Chiefs’ centre back pairings used this season, the pecking order under recent coaches, Ngcobo’s brief stint as Willard Katsande’s replacement and whether the player himself should choose to cut ties with Chiefs.
Confusing First Season For Ngcobo
The 2021/22 campaign was meant to see Njabulo Ngcobo come in to be Kaizer Chiefs’ defensive leader. The problem for the former Moroka Swallows centre back is that Amakhosi coach had never seen him play a match. Stuart Baxter admitted publicly: “I didn’t see him play last year. I wasn’t in South Africa. The reason for him not starting is that I had never seen him before. You talk about last season, I didn’t see one minute of last season, so the first minute I saw him was when I walked through the gate at Naturena.”
