Kitchee chief says no excuses for ‘bad season’, says Hong Kong club have head coach ‘options’ in warning to manager
- Kitchee poised to lose grasp on title following sub-par campaign, owner Ken Ng acknowledges club ‘have problems’
- Squad will ‘naturally evolve’ with some senior players set for exits, and recruitment planned for summer
Kitchee boss Ken Ng Kin said his club had problems and there were no excuses for a “bad season” in which they have relinquished their domestic supremacy to Lee Man.
The Hong Kong Premier League champions will lose their title in the next few weeks, but the president said there would be no decision over the future of Kim Dong-jin, the interim head coach, until the end of Kitchee’s FA Cup campaign.
However, in a pointed warning to Kim, he said the club were look at “some options” when it came to filling the post on a permanent basis.
Ng is anticipating a number of summer arrivals, and said the club was assessing the suitability of each player “to remain next season”.
Kitchee are six points behind league leaders Lee Man, with two games remaining, while conceding defeat this season, Ng vowed to do everything possible to reclaim the crown in 2024-25.
The team won the Senior Shield in February, have an FA Cup semi-final against Eastern on Sunday, and next Wednesday play BC Rangers in the Sapling Cup final.
And Ng hinted that Kim’s prospects of staying in the job could hinge on securing more silverware.
“We are focusing on an interim solution for this one month, but also looking at next season, and there are some options,” Ng said. “I don’t think we’ll make any decisions until after the FA Cup [final on June 1].
“If we win three trophies, it’s different from winning just one. What we do in the short term will depend on that.”
Asked if the two cup competitions were, therefore, make or break for Kim, Ng said: “I don’t want to make that statement, because nobody ever said that. I’m not saying that. We’ll see what happens this season, and what we look for in the next season.”
Kim took charge in late September, after Kitchee sacked Alex Chu Chi-kwong following a poor start to the season. Early in his reign, Kim shipped out Ogenyi Onazi and Aleksandar Damchevski, who were both recruited in preseason.
“We have problems, and it started from the beginning of the season,” Ng said. “We brought in some foreign players and had to replace them.
“Stopping for two months for the Asian Cup affected us, but it affected everybody. There is no excuse, we didn’t perform well, and our level of football suddenly took a downturn in the second half of the season.
“But we’re not stopping what we do this season, and preparing for the next, or the other way around. It is a bad season, because we lost the league, but we still have a chance to win three trophies.”
Kitchee have routinely struggled against younger, more mobile opposition, while their starting XI for the critical league defeat by Eastern last week boasted an average age of 31½.
“There will be a natural evolution … some players are into their senior years,” Ng said. “There will be a couple of old guys still here, because they have experience. If they are physically capable, they will be important for us.
“Like every year, we’re looking to bring in new players, that is for sure. We’re looking at all the players here … how suitable they are to remain for next season.”
Failure to win the league means Kitchee must win the FA Cup to avoid the ignominy of missing out on Asian football for the first time since 2011.
If they do make it, they will be playing in the Asian Champions League 2, a newly created second-tier competition for the lesser clubs in the region.
“I want to … be in ACL2 and to do well,” Ng said. “That is what our team is supposed to do. If we don’t, it is not the end of the world. We will come back, I am sure.”
