This just isn’t the same team we’re used to seeing, reader. The offseason took away Cameron Lancaster, Kyle Smith, Greg Ranjitsingh, and Ilija Ilic. Before this match even started, injuries had taken away Paolo DelPiccolo, Brian Ownby (reportedly out 6-8 weeks) and Richard Ballard. While Los Morados have consistently shown resilience in the face of adversity in the past, their efforts of late haven’t been enough to get them over the line.
Thanks to the aforesaid injuries and a couple of sub-standard performances from Paco Craig, Hackworth started yet another new lineup against the Hounds on Saturday night. Lundt was again in goal, with a back four of Shaun Francis, Alexis, Taylor Peay in his first ever start for City, and Oscar on the right. Magnus Rasmussen, Niall McCabe and Speedy Williams started in midfield, with Abdou and Davis IV on the wings and Luke in the #9 spot. For their part, the Hounds didn’t roll out anything or anyone unexpected, playing a pretty defensive 4-1-4-1 with Dos Santos, Neco Brett, and Anthony Velarde appearing as the preferred attacking options on breaks.
While I was fairly comfortable with City’s back line, the midfield simply begged for an anchor starting off. When Totsch came on for Luke in the 34′, things settled down appreciably, even though City did have the lion’s share of possession for the first half, and really the whole game (58.6%). However, all of that possession only led to six shots for the entire game, and just one on target.
Cuatro fit his right wing role just fine, but came off injured in the 22′ without having been able to create much up to then. Thiam, starting on the opposite side, hasn’t adapted to his wide role all that well yet in my view. He had just one off-target shot in his entire 90 minutes, completed 57.1% of his passes in Pittsburgh’s half, and only had one touch juuuuust inside the Hounds’ 18 yard box. Luke actually acquitted himself pretty well in his appearance, but had to come out much earlier than anyone wanted. Lucky Mkosana, who came on for Davis, didn’t fare any better than Abdou did in just under 70′, playing much more centrally than Cuatro had been. Lucky passed the ball pretty well but got torched in duels, winning one and losing six. The purported attacking corps as a group didn’t create a single scoring chance in the game and Thiam’s shot toward the end of the first half was the only one the entire group took the whole game.
The midfield, Rasmussen specifically, fared a bit better, but the performance still wasn’t great. Totsch embraced his destroyer role when he came on for Luke, winning five of seven duels and four of five in the air, but his distribution was generally poor at 35% in the opposing half. Niall and Speedy were a bit tidier, but Magnus only completed 54.2% of his passes in the entire game, too. To be fair, he was persistently looking for through balls to the attackers, but not many came off. He won nine of his twenty duels, which isn’t bad, and was five of ten in the air. In attack, the midfield four put five shots up, but just one on target from Rasmussen, a header in the 77′ after City were down a goal.
The back line did okay, though Oscar’s service from wide areas wasn’t very good. Francis’s performance was fairly anonymous, as well.
Pittsburgh was always going to make this a difficult game to play, of course. For their part, though, despite not having much of the ball they nearly doubled City’s shot count (11), with three on target including the penalty. The heat map shows that, while the Burgh didn’t have the ball much, they forced City to keep it in their own half for most of the time.
Morados aren’t clicking. Like, at all. This was a defensive game, sure. But you almost never see some of these numbers in a Louisville City game, no matter the opponent. City, again, is playing to score, and that’s not a bad thing. The problem is they just can’t do it. They can’t create enough chances, and they can’t finish the ones they do create. And because Morados set out to be the aggressive team in attack, the defense has to suffer.
The goal they gave up in this game was yet another counter-attack. No, the counter itself didn’t result in the goal, but Alexis’s lunge into the back of Anthony Velarde was the result of him having been 60 yards upfield on the previous dead ball play. He’s not up there because he shouldn’t be, mind you. But this group’s inability to score and defend the counter is basically like watching an 80’s sitcom re-run. The dialogue may change a bit but the plot is the same, the result is the same. You don’t really even need to watch it to know what happens. And it’s getting pretty stale.
Hackworth said last week after the loss to Birmingham that this group needed to learn some pretty hard lessons. Injuries may be to blame for part of why this team can’t seem to learn them, but at some point it needs to happen or real panic will start to set in. On to Tampa Bay.
