Head Coach Adrian Heath
On how to best prepare for NYCFC…
“They’re difficult to play against for sure. That front four are as good as anybody in the league depending who they play even. In [Maximiliano] Moralez, they’ve got one of the best players in the league. I love watching him play. [Valentin] Castellanos has been arguably the best striker in the league. They’ve got the young kid, Santiago Rodriguez. They’ve got the kid, [Talles] Magno. They’ve spent a lot of money on that front four, whichever ones they play. We know that it’s going to be a difficult task. I have no doubt that Ronny’s [Ronny Deila] watched us and know that we play really well at home. And if we can play as well as we have been, certainly like we did against the Galaxy, then we’ll be able to cause them trouble.”
On carrying momentum from the FC Dallas game into this one…
“Well that’s what we have to. Allianz is normally very, very good to us. We’ve had a few games this year that…we’ve lost games that we shouldn’t have lost. If we can play as well as we can, then we give a good account of ourselves at home against anybody. I just want us to continue our league form. I think it’s been really good the last two or three weeks. Probably haven’t have had the points total that we deserve for the performances, but we’re going to have to play well. As I say, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been three years since we last played them and I think they’re a really good team to watch. I’m looking forward to see how we cope with them.”
On his confidence in the back line…
“Brent [Kallman] has never let us down when we’ve asked of him. He’ll come in. I thought before [Bakaye] Dibassy came back, he was maybe playing his best football. We think he is going to be fine. Obviously it’s going to be a big step up for Joseph Rosales, but we’ve got a lot of faith in the kid. And the rest of the team is fit and healthy, so let’s bring it on and let’s get ready.”
On looking ahead to the break…
“We’ve spoke about that. Tomorrow when it finishes, like New York, it will be five games in 15 days and that’s never easy. So let’s get tomorrow off and then they can have a week’s rest. The most of them will have four or five days off. They’re looking forward to that, but let’s go and finish it on a good note so everybody leaves here in good spirits.”
Defender Brent Kallman
On bouncing back from the midweek loss…
“We’ve got no choice. In this business you’ve got to try to have a short memory. As much as that one hurt, you got to leave it there, you got to focus up and get ready for a really, really difficult opponent. We talked about it in the meeting today, probably, we face the best team in the MLS at this point in time. There can’t be any looking back or feeling sorry for ourselves. It’s got to be 100 percent focus on Saturday.”
On trying to find consistency game-to-game…
“We’ve got to try and take the good from a couple of those performances and they’re different, right? Against the Galaxy, we were a lot better with the ball, creating things, more dangerous going forward. If we can take some of that and then we can take from the Dallas game on the road, we were together. Really good shape. Difficult to break down and a really good defensive attitude. We can kind of take a little bit from each of those things on both sides of the ball and bring that into Saturday, it will do really well for us.”
On his defensive responsibilities versus NYCFC’s offense…
“Just the same as always. Good positioning. Reading the game well and then communicating with the guys around me. Obviously, they have one of the best forwards in the league, probably the best forward in the league, so making sure our spacing is really good and we’re dropping at the right time and we’re dropping together and recover for each other. Just all the little things, we got to do them really well.”
On getting the energy from the home crowd…
“Huge, huge. It’s no secret that winning on the road is really difficult in this league so you have to take care of business when you’re at home. We’ve had a couple slip-ups so far this year, so the pressure is definitely on. We need to start getting three points whenever we’re at home and using the advantage we have with our great crowd.”
