ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – With four goals in his past two games, Penn FC’s Lucky Mkosana has clearly shaken off the injury bug that was hindering him early this season and helped his side maintain a positive mid-season surge that sent it level on points with the seventh-place New York Red Bulls II and eighth-place Charleston Battery going into Saturday’s action.

On Friday night, his two-goal performance against the Tampa Bay Rowdies – one of his former clubs – was marked by the Zimbabwean keeping it as simple as he had in his two-goal performance against Louisville City FC. Mkosana’s last three goals have all resulted from sharp near-post runs that have made him an easy target for Penn’s wide players to find with low deliveries.

There was an element of good fortune about Mkosana’s first goal against Tampa Bay, to be sure, but the kind bounce that the 30-year-old seized upon was still in part caused by his movement, which forced the Rowdies defense to collapse toward the near post.

“Lucky is fit now,” said Penn FC Head Coach Raoul Voss after Friday’s game. “He wasn’t really healthy at the start of the season and now he had his rhythm and he’s a very good forward.”

It’s not just on the goals he’s scored recently that Mkosana is making that run, which is giving Penn’s wide players the chance to at least think about sending in crosses blind with the understanding that Mkosana’s going to be close when the ball arrives at the top-corner of the six-yard area. Five of the Zimbabwean’s six shots on goal this season have come from inside the penalty area this season, with four of those resulting in goals.

A valuable cog in his previous spell in Pennsylvania’s capital when he scored 20 goals in the regular season in 2012 and 2013 to help the side reach the USL Cup Playoffs on both occasions, Mkosana might need to bring a little more variety moving forward – faking a near-post run before peeling off to shake a defender, for example – but if he can keep this level of consistency going forward Penn is going to be a serious threat for a return to the playoffs for the first time since 2014.