Tinkler admits Kotoko won ugly in Baba Yara return against Heart of Lions
Asante Kotoko left it late but did enough to secure a 2-1 victory over Heart of Lions on their return to the Baba Yara Sports Stadium - their first win of the new Ghana Premier League season.
After being held 2-2 by newcomers Debibi United on matchday one, the Porcupine Warriors found a way, even if head coach Eric Tinkler admits it was far from pretty.
Emmanuel Mamah gave Kotoko the lead in the 27th minute, finishing off a move started by Patrick Asiedu, before turning provider just after the hour mark to set up Isaac Opoku Agyemang for the second in the 63rd minute.
Heart of Lions, reduced to 10 men, made it interesting when Francis Odoom converted from the spot in the second minute of added time, but Kotoko saw the game out to move to four points.
Tinkler was blunt in his assessment afterwards.
"Still a work in progress. Sometimes you're going to win it ugly, and I feel, okay, we won it ugly today, but we'll take the three points and move on," he said.
"I don't think we were great, to be honest. Made it very, very difficult for ourselves today because you know, they're a good team, they play that 4-3-3 system, a lot of rotations, and we struggled to deal with them and they created quite a few chances. But we managed to survive.
"But overall, still a lot of work that we got to do defensively because our shifting is not great. I changed the system to a back five when we were 2-0 up, and we still struggled with the shifting against 10 men. So you know, still a work in progress."
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