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City’s O’Connor Disappointed by Letdown

By NICHOLAS MURRAY - nicholas.murray@uslsoccer.com, 04/23/17, 10:32AM EDT

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‘Avoidable’ goal left River Cities Cup clash with Cincinnati tied 1-1 in front of 20,473


Photo courtesy Em-Dash Photography / Louisville City FC

CINCINNATI – Louisville City FC emerged with its undefeated record intact, but Head Coach James O’Connor was disappointed to have finished with a 1-1 draw as FC Cincinnati scored with 11 minutes to go in front of 20,473 fans at Nippert Stadium in the first River Cities Cup meeting of the season.

“I just felt our passing tonight was off,” said O’Connor. “Normally our passing is a lot more consistent and sharp. We had a lot of cheap turnovers, so I’m disappointed for the lads that we didn’t hang on and get all three points, but it wasn’t to be.”

The contest between the two rivals had got off to a rousing start for the visitors. Twenty minutes in, Brian Ownby took a pass from Kyle Smith in the right channel and turned his defender beautifully to open up space as he moved inside. The City newcomer pushed forward and drove home a perfect finish that caromed off the left post and into the net, sending a large contingent of travelling support into celebration.

“We’ve been working on attacking patterns in practice where I let Kyle get pretty high in an attacking position,” said Ownby. “He went high and dragged the defender over, [Sean] Totsch played me the ball in, I one-touched it back to [Smith], he one-touched it back to me and then I was kind of in the zone. Once I got some space I just hit it and it worked out. It was nice to get my first goal for the club.”

Louisville held its lead well into the second half as Cincinnati threatened on set piece in particular. Former City player Aodhan Quinn provided the service on a number of chances, but Louisville’s defense dealt well with the chances for the most-part. A goal-line clearance by Niall McCabe from a header by FCC’s Austin Berry off a corner from the right was the closest the hosts came to an equalizer for most of the second half.

But Louisville wasn’t able to drive home its advantage when Cincinnati elected to move to a more attacking formation, leaving three defenders at the back. While George Davis IV came close to his fourth goal in as many games, only for his effort to be saved by Mitch Hildebrandt, O’Connor thought his side could have been more dangerous on the counter-attack.

“They’ve gone three at the back, and all the space is out wide where we can get two-v-one so I’m looking at it and I’m expecting us to do a better job of getting it out wide,” said O’Connor. “For us, the job is to see where the space is to really get at them, because we’ve got Richard [Ballard] and Mark [Kaye] who have good pace to be able to get at them and I think our understanding needed to be a little bit better.”


Photo courtesy Em-Dash Photography / Louisville City FC

The lack of a second goal left Louisville open to an equalizer, and with 11 minutes to go it arrived off a broken play that Quinn capitalized on to score against his former team, keeping City from a fourth consecutive victory.

“The goal is very avoidable from our perspective, and I think that’s what disappointing,” said O’Connor. “It’s really frustrating, especially for as hard as the lads had worked. The lads had worked really hard and you get late in the game and give up something like that, it’s disappointing for the guys because I thought with all of their hard work and effort they deserved the three points.”

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