Head Coach Adrian Heath
On getting a 4-1 win against the Portland Timbers at home…
“Obviously winning covers a multitude of sins, and our home form hasn’t been what we would’ve liked this season so to go out worthy winners in the end, 4-1. Confidence has been good. Everybody comes in on the Monday with a spring in their step. As I said to the players this morning, that has to be the start. We’ve spoke about having 10 home games. Let’s see if we can get back to Allianz [Field] being a fortress that it’s been in the past. If it does, the way that we’ve played on the road this year, we’ll put ourselves in a good position come the end of the season.”
On the offense starting to click to create chances with the addition of Emanuel Reynoso…
“Is it a coincidence that Rey [Emanuel Reynoso] has been back and we’ve got a couple of goals against [FC] Kaiserslautern as well? No, we’re starting to get more and more people back healthy, and I actually think some of the younger guys like Sang Bin [Jeong] and Mender [Garcia] have looked a lot more like what we think they are. Mender is starting to relax a little bit. The disappointment is Sang Bin because I’ve felt as though he’s started to come into his own and he’s got a little bit of an injury – might be a bit early for him at the weekend. But no, I think people in attacking positions Bongi [Bongokuhle Hlongwane] was there again at the weekend: made one [goal], scored one, so he’s doing particularly well at this moment in time.”
On the importance of closing out the match against Portland to get a positive result…
“I think mentally and to keep that momentum going, it’s so important. It felt like a loss in [Real] Salt Lake to be two-nil up and then for chances to kill the game off, we don’t do that, and in the end, you concede in the 95th minute which has happened too many times this year. So, to go and get the third goal was a big relief for everybody because if it had gone longer, I’d felt that we’d have gotten apprehensive and started to drop a little bit deeper to defend the goal. But in the end, it worked out well.”
On slowing down the Austin FC attack…
“That’s going to be the question for us; [Sebastian] Druissi was the MVP last year, top goal-scorer, [Gyasi] Zardes… [Maximiliano] Urruti. Ethan [Finlay] will come back wanting to prove something as well. [Jon] Gallagher has scored goals this year, [Diego] Fagundez. They’ve got a pretty potent attack whichever way they approach the game. A lot of pace, a lot of brains and two players who are particularly in form in front of goal.”
On balancing the defensive shape with a slightly injured DJ Taylor and without Michael Boxall…
“Barring Sang Bin [Jeong] and Fraga [Franco Fragapane], we might have everybody available. Is that BK [Brent Kallman] coming back in? Is it [Bakaye] Dibassy having enough to start the game? Is it Kervin Arriaga who’s played there in the past not only for his club team but for Honduras [National Football Team]. So, we’ve got a few decisions to make. We’ll probably focus on bit more on that moving forward from tomorrow.”
On feeling like the team is clicking at the right time ahead of 10 home matches…
“We’re hoping so. I’ve said it on numerous occasions this year, I don’t think our points tally is anything near reflective of how we’ve played. I think we should be sitting comfortably five or six points better off. You put them where we are now with the games in hand that we’ve got, we would be in a really healthy position. So that’s been my job and my message to the players. We haven’t gotten the results that we should’ve done for the way we’ve played. Now, if we can marry those two together with the performances, keep the goals going like we are doing, it should set us up nicely.”
Defender DJ Taylor
On the importance of the win over Portland and the team’s success…
“It was huge for us because we finally had an all-around performance. We’ve been missing that the whole season and you finally see it all come together where everybody is doing their job and we closed out a game. Especially at home because I think we only had one win, one loss, and five or six ties, it was just an incredible experience. It’s really relieving to finally see that we can do it. We can finally push like this throughout the rest of the season.”
On the key to a solid defensive performance and helping the offense score goals…
“That’s the biggest thing: you’ve got to defend forward. The biggest thing is preventative marking. Even while we’re attacking, not having mental lapses and making sure we close them out so if we do lose the ball, we get it back and keep going again. That allows our guys who attack [know] that they don’t have to defend and come back and defend with us. They just want to be attacking the whole time. So as long as we’re doing our jobs, locking them [opposing team] in the whole time and winning the ball back as soon as we lose it, it helps them [offense] a lot.”
On the strategies covered in training to combat Austin FC on Saturday…
“We’ve really been working on breaking that middle line, building out the back. That’s a huge thing that we’ve worked on the last few couple weeks. We saw it last week: we were able to build out the back with ease and break lines like that and create really dangerous opportunities for people. That will be our main focus again against Austin [FC]. Last performance we had there, we definitely could’ve won. We’ll expect nothing less than our last performance last weekend.”
On the integral performers on the Austin FC squad…
“Yeah. They’ve got a few good players: Ethan Finley, he’s always good. He used to play here. He’s just a hard worker, a grit-guy. I used to play against Jon Gallagher who’s pretty decent… I think he’s on the [MLS] All-Star Team this year. The biggest guy is [Sebastian] Driussi, obviously he’s really good so just being aware of him and his movements.”
