Dembare face bogeyman

The man who helped Highlanders exorcise a 10-year winless jinx against Dynamos three years ago, Erol Akbay, is back in the capital city this afternoon.

Akbay returns to Rufaro as a coach who has never lost a league match to Dynamos and will be remembered for masterminding the loosening of the Harare giants' stranglehold over Bosso.

In the four times that he faced Dynamos as Highlanders coach, Akbay won thrice and drew once including the famous result, a 2 – 0 victory in May 2016 that saw his team beat DeMbare for the first time in a decade.

Dynamos will be hoping to bounce back to winning ways when they host Ngezi Platinum Stars at Rufaro this afternoon, following last week's disappointing away loss to bottom side Bulawayo Chiefs.

This time Akbay brings a Ngezi side that has won all three of their previous meetings with Dynamos.

With no jinx to worry about, Akbay intends to beat Dynamos again this afternoon and also do it in style.

"Of course, our fans, the coaches and the club want to win, but I want to win with good football. We have been training hard this week, we have trained two times a day at a very high tempo," Akbay said ahead of the high-profile encounter.

"I hope we can show people this weekend that the boys are coming up and demonstrate how Ngezi Platinum wants to play football. We have changed our style of playing football this week and the boys are surprisingly very happy with the new style," Akbay added.

Under Akbay, Ngezi Platinum have not had the best of starts to the league season sitting in eighth place on the log standings with three wins and three losses in eight matches.

In fact, the Dutchman has failed to pick three points in the last two matches against ZPC Kariba and Yadah FC.

"I am not happy with how we have started the season. First four or five games we played very good football despite losing some matches. We had a little problem with money issues and that makes my job not easy.

"It's difficult because you start from zero, but I hope this week we can show that the boys are ready for competition and I hope the problems are finished," he added.

But Dynamos will be pleased to note that Ngezi are coming with a depleted side, missing the services of big-name players in Donald Teguru, Tichaona Mabvura and Kelvin Bulaji through injuries.

On the other hand, Dynamos coach Tonderai Ndiraya, formerly with Ngezi, is worried about the club's record against Ngezi in the past few encounters.

Ironically he is the person who guided Ngezi to all the last three wins over Dynamos.

"We haven't got a very good record against Ngezi, but we are looking to turn things around. I think the last match we won was a 3-2 home win at the National
Sports Stadium and that was in 2017," Ndiraya said, almost ruing the fact that he was responsible for those struggles.

"We are pushing the guys giving them confidence after that disappointing defeat against Bulawayo Chiefs. We have since spoken to the boys to put the game behind us. We need to bounce back and behave in a manner befitting the big brand that we are," he added.

Ndiraya will be facing the team that he left barely six months ago and he reckons that he has since moved on.

"It's going to be a bit emotional in the sense that I have managed to build my CV there, they gave me a good platform to show what I can do. I have since moved on, they have since moved on and we are all going to be looking for good results on the day and my mind is really focused in reviving our team," he said.

Dynamos will, for a third week running, be missing a player through suspension with Tawanda Chisi out.

Foreigners Junior Ngahan and Robert Sackey are also unavailable through injury.