Louisville City certainly looked much more comfortable in the confines of Slugger Field on Saturday night than they have previously this season. Sporting the third different lineup in as many games, we saw some new starters and some new ideas. Old trends reared their head a bit, but Morados righted the ship in the first half and saw out a result in the second.
Hackworth changed up the system yet again in this match, rolling out a 3-4-3 for the first time in quite a while with Lundt in goal, Paco, Alexis and Sean Totsch in the back, Oscar and Cuatro on the wings, Niall and MAG RAM in the center and Brian Ownby and Luke Spencer flanking Abdou up top. Niall played the much deeper of the two central midfielders and while there were some mistakes, I was honestly impressed with how he acquitted himself in that role.
Hartford, for their part, set out to try and overwhelm the midfield in a 4-1-4-1 but failed to gain much of a hold on the center of the park in the first half. City did a good job working inside out and back in again in possession, especially on the right, in spite of what I thought was a fairly good shift from Athletic’s Raymond Lee. Nickolaj Lyngo picked up a very early yellow card which seemed to portend trouble for Hartford, but the Tacko Fall of the USL (as I call him) had a good night otherwise. He’s very, very tall is what I mean.
Athletic did manage to get a toehold in the game in the second half but could never make anything of it. To their credit, they limited Louisville City to only two touches inside their 18 the entire second period, while being considerably busier in Ben Lundt’s area themselves.
Overall, Morados’ performance was a steady improvement over the start of the season. They won the possession battle but lost in duels, due somewhat to the height issue we mentioned above. Passing in the opposition half is always difficult at Slugger but City did a slightly better job of it than Hartford, 61% – 58%. Athletic out-shot Louisville City 20-18, but only four of their shots were on target while Morados had twice that.
All of the back three had very solid games in my view, the goal in the 6’ notwithstanding. Totsch in particular looked much more comfortable on the right and I felt combined pretty well with Cuatro there. He won 10 of 17 duels, leading the team, and created a scoring chance.
Niall and Magnus both did well in possession on the night. Niall completed 80% of his passes, 71% in the Hartford half, while Magnus went 83% and 66.7%. Playing in more of a creative role, Magnus did just that, with an assist on Spencer’s equalizer and creating four chances altogether on the night.
Neither Oscar nor Cuatro had the kind of impact on the game that we might have wanted, but both still played well. Hartford’s fullbacks both had a size advantage on their counterparts, making it hard for City to create much at all from wide areas, especially deep in the attacking third. The pair nonetheless created four chances between the two of them and otherwise had solid outings.
In attack, it was obviously good to see Spencer hit the score sheet. Thiam probably should have had a goal late on in the first half, too, but Lissek did well to avoid giving up a third. Thiam, playing center forward, otherwise didn’t get much in the way of service, but he did a pretty decent job keeping Sem de Wit busy. Playing Luke in a wide role was interesting, though I’m not sure how well it worked. Ownby put in a shift and while he didn’t get credit for the game winner, we all know that was going in either way.
All in all, a pretty good performance, and a home win to boot. The second half obviously wasn’t as pretty to watch, but keeping Hartford off the board was all City had to do and they accomplished that. Onward and up-the-table-ward.
