Orlando Pirates coach Ruud Krol has admitted that the loss of Benson Mhlongo will come as a big blow to his side's Soweto Derby aspirations.

The Bafana Bafana midfielder suffered a serious knee injury in the Buc's 2-1 defeat to AmaZulu on Wednesday evening.

The loss of the 28-year-old along with the Soweto giants suffering the third consecutive defeat will see morale at low going into the spectacle at the Orlando Stadium.

"It is of course a big blow going into the derby, but we now have two days and we have to try and boost our confidence and we hope that we can take the three points from that game," said Krol after the game when asked about Mhlongo's injury.

"Today we lost three points and I think that was not neccessary, we could have got a draw and of course we lost an important player, which I think is more imoportant than the three points."

Neil Tovey's charges opened the scoring in the 26th minute when Bradley Ritson headed home a Mark van Heerden free-kick, but this was cancelled out by Katlego Mashego, before the home team grabbed the winner in the 76th minute through Ayanda Dlamini.

The Dutch-born mentor laid that blame for the loss to a poor defensive display by his side as he feels they gifted the opposition both goals.

He continued: "I think that we gave two goals away that we should not have given away. In the first-half we gave them all the variations of free-kick set pieces and I told the guys that (Bradley) Ritson is dangerous at that kind of thing and he was alone in front of goal.

"If you have a good defence that is not possible. For the second goal we were also sloppy in defence."