Orlando Pirates head coach Josef Zinnbauer on Tuesday issued a staunch warning to Thursday's Nedbank Cup opponents, Mamelodi Sundowns, ahead of their blockbuster quarter-final clash this week.
The Buccaneers travel to Loftus Versfeld where they will face arguably the best side in the country, even in Africa, for a place in the competition's semi-finals.
Speaking ahead of Thursday's clash, Zinnbauer said that his side were looking forward to the challenge of facing an in-form Sundowns.
"We've been putting in good work during the week, the team understands what we want," Zinnbauer said.
"The team have followed the ideas of the technical team and our different ideas on how to play and have been willing to try different methods.
"We always believe we can win, no matter the opponent.
"We know how good Sundowns are at the moment and the threats that they pose.
"We have respect, but we do not have fear."
The German also issued an injury update on his squad, including that of attacker Thembinkosi Lorch and how these injuries have affected their tactical methods.
"When you have 20, 30, 40 players available then you can implement different things, now at the moment we cannot train," Zinnbauer added.
"We could count how many times we were able to field a training session with 11 players and don't forget the international break too.
"People on the outside always say 'oh now there's a break you guys can improve the team', but they forget that around 10 players were out representing their national teams.
"When those players returned another 5-6 players were injured and that also impacted our preparations.
"That's always a situation that the supporters or outside guys need to understand when working with the team.
"Now we have tried to implement different systems and with the players out injured close to returning, we can play in different ways to adapt better to the opponent, such as Sundowns.
"We're getting closer to what we want and hopefully in the next few weeks we'll be better and more flexible in these changes in tactical systems.
"With Lorch, he is close and we are waiting on the medical guys to give us the go ahead as with the other players out who we are hoping to have back soon."
Kick-off is at 18:00.