As Louisville City FC climbs back up the USL Eastern Conference standings, coach James O’Connor is concentrating on things other than the table — namely keeping his club in its current run of form.
With back-to-back wins last week, LouCity now sits third behind only the Charleston Battery and Tampa Bay Rowdies. Five points behind the Battery, LouCity has played two fewer games.
“I tend not to look too much at the league table, especially at this part of the season,” O’Connor told local media at his regular weekly press conference. “It’s very early on. I think it’s important you focus and you’re trying and make sure you get good performances.”
LouCity temporarily took first place after an April 15 win over the Rowdies. But after that, the side drew three games and lost another, all while taking a pair of weekends off on the schedule.
Since then, the boys in purple have won three of their last five. A 4-4 draw at Charleston prevented the league leader from creating more distance. The Rowdies are just a point ahead of LouCity.
“I think for us, it’s focus on the controllable and the next game, Pittsburgh,” O’Connor said of Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. Saturday tilt at Slugger Field. “So we need to get a good weeks training to us and then we need a good performance against Pittsburgh.”
More from Coach’s press conference:
On the Pittsburgh Riverhounds’ strengths: “They play a lot of good football. They play through the middle. They like to possess the ball. They’ve got good movement. They’ve got good attacking players – Corey Hertzog and Kevin Kerr – and so we’ve got to be mindful of that and try to create some problems for them as well.”
On setting goals at this point in the season: “I think I look at every other game and make sure we try to prepare for that. If you can train to be the very best you can be every day and you can play and give really strong performances, then the league table looks out for itself. I think that’s the biggest thing for us — making sure we focus on the process, which is training really well and then getting prepared for the game on Saturday.”
On his team’s increase in offense, especially a 3-0 win Sunday at New York Red Bulls II: “I think we’ve done it before. We just haven’t necessarily taken the chances. I think we’ve had chances in other games and we could’ve maybe scored more goals that we did. Sunday was a good example…W could’ve scored more goals than we did. But I think for us, we are very encouraged by the performance. I think in games we’ve had some good chances that we haven’t necessarily always taken them. So that’s what was so pleasing about Sunday — we took the chances that we got.”
