With his club on its longest winning streak of the season, Louisville City FC coach James O’Connor sees two opponents this week: the Harrisburg City Islanders, and any signs of complacency from the boys in purple.
O’Connor said he’ll be just as demanding on players — if not more — in training leading up to Saturday’s 7 p.m. game in Pennsylvania, where LouCity will go for a fourth straight victory.
“You work even harder,” O’Connor told media members at his weekly press conference. “I think that’s the big thing for me. There better not be any complacency with any of our guys. I think that’s something we speak about. That’s my pet hate is complacency, so there won’t be any danger of that.”
Overall, LouCity is unbeaten in its last five United Soccer League games, winning four of five of those. The draw was a 4-4 result at Charleston, the Eastern Conference leader. This run has LouCity in second place with a 7-1-4 record (25 points).
The City Islanders are 2-7-5 (10 points), currently last in the East. But, again, O’Connor won’t settle for anything other than LouCity’s best effort leading into the matchup.
“I think one of our big things is trying to get players in who are hungry, have lots of desire and want to work hard, because that’s a given here,” O’Connor said. “You’re going to work hard. But there needs to be that level of understanding that you want to actually go and achieve things which, again, is something our players have in buckets and we’re delighted with.”
More from Coach’s press conference…
• On what’s he looking for against Harrisburg: “My focus is completely on Harrisburg. We’ve already started watching them. They’ve got some attacking players – Pedro Ribeiro obviously played in the MLS (for) Orlando. James Thomas, Johnny Mendoza — they’ve got players that can hurt you…They play Bethlehem Steel (Tuesday) night, so we’ll obviously try to watch that as well and be as prepared as we can be for the game on Saturday.” (The Steel won 1-0.)
• On the best part of scoring more goals: “Just winning, to be honest. We’re very pleased to win. I think the New York (Red Bulls II) game was very good. I think there were some nice passages of play. I think the opportunities we created on Saturday were very encouraging, and it was nice to see the last two games to be able to capitalize on those opportunities and score some goals has been nice.”
• On who to credit during the streak: “I think for us, it’s always the defenders seem to get praise when we don’t concede. Then we score some goals, and it’s obviously the attackers. For us, a lot of our attack starts at the back, and a lot of our defending starts at the front. It’s hard for me to give a lot of praise to a striker or a lot of praise to a goalkeeper. Purely, for us, it’s definitely the team. They all contribute to both.”
