That was fun, wasn’t it? Clearly, Brian Ownby saved all his goalscoring for knockout games only in 2018. Next time just let us know, buddy! In addition to City’s Number 10 hitting the scoresheet for the first time in ages, Saturday night’s came also featured cameo appearances from fan favorites Matt Fondy and Sean Reynolds in the stands. Wit the news of FCC’s untimely demise dominating the pre-match conversation, a good time was surely had by all when the ref blew full time.
Louisville City trotted out what’s becoming the new normal under John Hackworth for this game, with no changes in the starting eleven in the last three games. Cam Lancaster went without a goal in this game for the first time in what feels like forever. Of course, that doesn’t mean he didn’t impact the game. The Steel defense was so worried about where the Brit was all night, they missed Brian Ownby and his beard sneaking past them in plain sight not once but twice.
After my midweek manifesto about formations, City played what you could almost call a 4-1-3-2 in this game. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Cuatro played a bit deeper than Ownby or Lancaster did, mostly helping Kyle Smith try to keep Santi Moar under wraps. Morados played fairly narrow, though Bethlehem wasn’t often able to punish City’s lack of width in transition. The Steel sent in 29 crosses in the game, but only connected on six of them.
Overall, possession and duels were about even, with Morados having slight edges in both, 52% and 57.3% respectively. To their credit, the Steel had 15 interceptions, which is a pretty high number, though not totally unexpected at Slugger. Neither team overran the other in passing statistics except possibly for key passes, of which Morados had nine and the Steel only seven. James Chambers had four all on his own, while Kyle had three. Both teams had 14 shots, City with five on target to Bethlehem’s two.
Individually, Paco had a stellar game in defense, passing for over 60% in the opposing half and winning all four of his duels. Paolo was a metronome in central midfield, winning eleven of fourteen duels and completing over 80% of his passes to go along with five tackles, three clearances and two interceptions. Niall picked up an assist on Ownby’s second goal and generated another scoring chance. Ilija was a little quiet but put in a solid outing. The outside backs were a bit busier on defense than they’ve been in the past couple weeks, but Oscar still managed to pick up an assist on the first goal while Kyle created three chances of his own.
It was pretty obvious that Bethlehem’s game plan centered around not letting Cam Lancaster touch the ball. That part, at least, was effective, as he only had eight passes in the game and nine touches all night, one of which was a kickoff. All that did was give Ownby room to cook. Brian wasn’t all that efficient from a passing standpoint, but he was a menace with the ball at his feet, winning 18 of his 26 duels. You read that right, 26 duels, and he won 18 of them. That’s a LOT. He also had six tackles on top of that. Man of the Match was deserved for certain. Cuatro was fairly quiet by comparison, but, again, he was playing a bit deeper to cover the right flank and take defenders away from the middle of the field.
All in all, it was a fun if nervy game, City survived, and make the Eastern Conference Finals for the fourth straight time to play New York Red Bulls II for the third straight time. Let’s go get it.
