Speid to 'iron out negatives'

After going down 2-0 to Portmore United for their second successive defeat in the Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL), Cavalier coach, Rudolph Speid says they will be keeping faith with the youngsters.

Last-season semi-finalists Cavalier defeated Reno and Arnett Gardens in their first two matches of the campaign but hit a snag over the last two games, losing to UWI and now Portmore.

"In this team, there are only two players under 24, everyone else is under 21, so we have to stick with these players and not give up on them too early. It's a great bunch of kids, so we will stick with them and iron out certain negatives," he said.

In yesterday's game, Speid, thought his team had enough chances, including a penalty early in the match, which Chevone Marsh failed to convert, to get a positive result, but, said they were not clinical enough in front of goal.

"We got a lot of opportunities, but we are not scoring. We just have to go back and work on that aspect of the game as scoring is the more important statistic," he continued.

"That penalty would have been the go-ahead goal. Then, we hit the post, and we got about three opportunities in about three minutes. But you saw what Portmore did with their penalty. They buried it, and we missed ours and continued missing some glorious opportunities. But what is good is that we are creating opportunities, and sooner than later, they will start to go in," he surmised.

Ten minutes into the contest, Cavalier were awarded a penalty, but Marsh's attempt was saved by Kemar Foster. Moments later, Portmore got a penalty of their own and Javon East put the visitors ahead. Then, eight minutes from the end, young Hardley Barnes netted the winner for Portmore, who moved to nine points from five matches.

"We needed these three points. It was key for us because we don't want to be chasing so early in the season. So this was important to stay close to the people above us and separate ourselves from the people behind us," Portmore coach Shavar Thomas stated.