Saturday is game day with our new Canadian friends! On a sidenote: Congrats to Mark Anthony-Kaye on making the Gold Cup roster for the Canadian national team. Back to the subject, let’s dive right in as we take a look at LCFC against Ottawa Fury FC.
Keys for Ottawa Fury:
Ottawa currently sit 5th in the standings and hold a record of 5-4-5 with 20 points. Ottawa is no Harrisburg (sorry I had to because I need to laugh about it to keep from hammering this review on LouCity). Ottawa are 2-2-1 in their last 5 games so their form is fairly solid.
That leads me to my first point: continue their run of good defensive performances. If they do this, there is no way LCFC can easily get a result at home.
The next point is to continue to play attacking football. They have scored 19 goals and conceded 17. Their attack is definitely able to get results.
The final key for Ottawa to find their road form. They have had a good record so far going 2-2-3 on the road with losses coming from Rochester Rhinos, St Louis FC and Tampa Bay Rowdies (all by 1 goal) so to say they are bad on the road is not accurate. Ottawa will need to be good on the road as Louisville City and its supporters have made Slugger Field a hard place to get a result. City’s last loss at Slugger was nearly a year ago!
Keys for Louisville City:
It is simple. Whatever they did against Harrisburg, throw it away. As James O’ Connor said, “come fighting back” is what LCFC has to do after dropping 3 points. Ottawa will be a bigger test than Harrisburg, so City will need to be at the top of their game to get a win.
The first key of the game is get back to controlling the tempo and flow of the game. We win when we do that, both at home and away. If we do that it will lead into my next key:
Get the attack moving. In the Harrisburg game our attack was predictable and Harrisburg capitalized on it. We need more creativity up in the front third of the field if we want to see shots put away.
The final key will be to keep our defense going strong. Allowing the wing defenders and midfielders space to run has really helped make the attack for LCFC more potent and lethal. With City getting back on track hopefully that loss to Harrisburg will not affect us in the long run for the title!
Prediction:
Louisville City 1 – 0 Ottawa Fury
I see Ottawa giving us quite a game. However, they haven’t faced the Louisville City’s supporters yet this season, who seem to find a way to will their team to victory at home more often than not. Ottawa will be a good test after Harrisburg loss to see if LCFC have the mentality to go all the way in the USL. Only time will tell. Come on down to Slugger and be a part of what should be a good game!
