New York City FC slipped to a 1-0 defeat to Red Bulls on Thursday night.
Here’s Five Points, presented by Etihad Airways…
Digging Deep
Head Coach Ronny Deila was left highly frustrated with a fourth 1-0 loss of a fragmented MLS regular season
Kyle Duncan scored a fortuitous goal to settle the 17th Hudson River Derby, consigning City to a fifth defeat in six regular season games.
Ronny told reporters: “I’ve never been through this before that we have lost four times 1-0. It’s very, very rare.
“Everybody, including myself, has to really dig deep and find that strength and that belief and that power that makes you come out to the pitch and bounce back. That’s what we’re going to do now on Monday.”
Controversial Moment
Did the ball cross the line for the only goal of the night? Without a goal decision system in play, it seems we’ll never know for sure, but it did count and was the difference between the teams on the scoreboard.
Sean Johnson will have been disappointed with the concession after fumbling the shot, but, as teammate James Sands pointed out, the U.S. international had plenty of credit in the bank after a couple of excellent saves in the first half, including one stunning stop from Danny Royer.
Sands said: “Sean let it in, but he saved us three or four times. I think there's bigger things that we have to address.”
Ronny agreed, saying: “I trust in Sean. Every goalkeeper have some things and he had a fantastic save in the first half and also a great save when it was 1-0 as well. Mistakes happen. It’s how we bounce back from it and I know we’re going to do that.”
Second Half Stumble
NYCFC made a decent start to the match, dominating the opening 30 minutes and racking up decent scoring chances for Héber and Maxime Chanot, but they were unable to carry that threat into the second half, failing to test Ryan Meara in the second 45'.
Ronny’s biggest disappointment was this reaction after the halftime interval, with Duncan’s goal arriving after a period of sustained Red Bulls pressure.
Deila believes the issues are based on energy rather than tactics, stating: “We need that [extra] 10 percent of energy like we had against Toronto and Miami because it’s all small differences between the teams here. Now we have four days to make ourselves ready for an important game for us.”
Plenty of Time
One crumb of comfort is that there is still plenty of time for NYCFC to rescue this heavily disrupted and tough start to this start-stop 2020 MLS campaign.
With matches vs. Columbus, Chicago, New England, D.C., and Cincinnati coming up in this first phase of the return to play in the coming weeks and many more games to follow after, we’re still in touch with the pack of teams on either side of the Playoffs line.
Quick Turn
This is certainly no time for NYCFC to feel sorry for themselves with a game against a much-fancied Columbus Crew SC side coming up fast on Monday night.
The team were back in training on Friday morning, looking to put things right after this disappointing return to action.
Monday night will see the Boys in Blue return to Red Bull Arena for a match which you can once again catch on the YES Network and at NYCFC.com/Radio from 7:00PM ET.
Let’s stick together and get back on the up and up.
