After a superb performance to beat Kaizer Chiefs in the quarter-final, City could not replicate that against Wits and were completely outplayed.
“First 45 minutes, dismal to be entirely honest, I thought we started extremely poorly,” Tinkler told SuperSport.
“We said in order to win this game we needed to match them in terms of aggression. We didn’t win a ball, a challenge, every first and second ball they won it, we didn’t stop the crosses coming into the box and looked really disorganised and poor in the first half, which was extremely disappointing.
“We also gifted them two very easy goals and then it’s always going to be difficult to come back against a team of Wits’ quality, 3-0 down at half-time…
“Learning curve, that’s important. It’s a learning curve for the players. Now we’ve got to start bucking down, working hard, we’ve got another away game now against [Golden] Arrows [on Wednesday], start focusing on that.”