Nick Cushing believes his side can take confidence from their recent road form.
New York City FC are on the West Coast this week as they prepare to face the LA Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park tomorrow night.
A testing fixture for City against the team third in the Western Conference, a win will see them record a fourth road win of the campaign following successes against Toronto FC, the Philadelphia Union, and the New England Revolution.
“We know the Galaxy are a top team,” Cushing said.
“I think when you have the quality they have in the front half of the field we know they will be dangerous.
“We know the previous results show that at home they’re clinical and they score a lot of goals.
“For us, we are in form away from home, we've got some good results to back up our away form.
“It's about making sure that we use every opportunity to be offensive. Of course, we respect the opposition but being a good team in form gives us confidence.”
He went on to add: “I think first and foremost is about you know, we want to be aggressive in our style, we want to play a high-intensity game.
“I think you saw that in the Columbus game even though the result maybe didn’t go for us, but we pushed the game right until the end.
“That takes a toll on some guys with a lot of travel and a game midweek and so rotation is the first thing that comes to mind. You need the opportunity to put in fresh legs.
“I've said before that building a roster that has depth gives you the opportunity to rotate but retain the quality level and we definitely saw that across those three games [last month].
“Every decision that I make and every change that we decide to make - whether it be tactical, or whether it be in the roster or the lineup - is to retain our offensive identity.
“We’ve got to attack teams, we’ve got to make sure that in every phase of the game, we're an attacking team.”
Cushing was also able to provide an update on the health status of Kevin O’Toole and Thiago Martins.
The defensive duo missed City’s last outing against the Columbus Crew through injury, and are working their way back to full fitness, with Cushing confirming their status on Tuesday.
“They are both back in training,” he said.
“They were probably right on the edge of being able to play in the Columbus game. I think for us, it's about not rushing them.
“It's halfway through the season and both guys had hamstring issues. I don't want it to reoccur in August or September. So we'll be pretty conservative with those guys. We'll make sure that we get it right.”
