The Brazilians find themselves way down in 13th place on the standings after earning just one victory from their opening four Premier Soccer League encounters.

The Chloorkop outfit were also dumped out of the MTN8 at the semi-final stage, leaving many a Sundowns fan calling for the coach's head.

However, the Dutchman remains cool as ever, and is confident of a turnaround in the coming weeks.

"Every coach wants to get a good start. No one plans to start bad only hoping to pick up later, but sometimes in football these things happen," he told the club's official website.

"Take a look at Liverpool - they have their worst start to a league season since the 1962/63 season. They have only collected two points from four matches, but that's football."

Downs most recently slumped to a 1-0 defeat to Golden Arrows at the weekend, although Neeskens believes there were several factors working against his team prior to that clash.

He said: "Before going into the match against Golden Arrows, there was an international break and we got the opportunity to work with the players remaining behind but a day before the match, we were very unfortunate to lose three players through injury in addition to the six players who were already injured."

Nyasha Mushekwi, Elias Pelembe and Richard Henyekane were the most recent players in the infirmary, joining the already injured Katlego Mphela, Edward Manqele, Eleazar Rodgers and Lebohang Mokoena.

Neeskens added: "Of course the injuries were a setback, and we had travel down to Durban with what we had available to us.

"Another point to mention is that it was the first time that we played with Emmanuel Baffour, Samuel Julies and Anthony Laffor up front, which was not easy for the players either because it was also their first time to start a match."