Kaizer Chiefs head coach Nasreddine Nabi has criticised his players for throwing away a two-goal lead against Royal AM on Saturday evening.
The Soweto giants missed the chance to move third on the Betway Premiership table after the 2-2 draw at the Peter Mokaba Stadium.
While Chiefs did miss a couple big chances, the Tunisian claims his side lacked the professionalism to see out the victory.
Read: COLLAPSE: Chiefs Throw Away Two-Goal Lead In Polokwane
"When you don't respect football, football doesn't respect you. At half-time we said it, after the first 45 minutes we could've scored five or six goals but we missed so many goals and some of them were just a simple touch," Nabi told SuperSport TV.
"When you give the opponent the chance to stay alive, that's what happens. Sometimes it's lack of professionalism, lack of responsibility, that's the result you get when you don't respect football.
"We had the control of the game from the beginning, we could have scored more goals but what is frustrating is even when you don't score goals you need be solid at the back, solid everywhere. If you don't score you need to defend well, you need to feel that maybe today I'm not gonna score, it's the two, three minutes, I need to sit back and defend the advantage.
"But even that we could not do it. We feel it's a mental thing, we need to work first on the mental before we work on tactical or technical."
Nabi feels not keeping a clean sheet was not the problem on the day.
"The problem is not the clean-sheet because we believe that we lost two points today, it's lack of professionalism from everyone," he added.
"We could have ended the first-half five or seven up, but we didn't do it. It's not the clean-sheet but when we have the opportunity to score we need score and when we have to do defend, we have to defend," Nabi concluded.
