Minnesota United is on an eight-game unbeaten run and has given up only one goal in the past four games combined. Unfortunately, the Loons also have gone four hours of game time without scoring a goal of their own, and so the talk is less about what’s going well — and more about what needs to improve.
“I’m really happy with the principles that sit behind what we’re trying to do with the ball and the way in which we’re trying to create chances,” coach Eric Ramsay said. “I feel like we can create chances in organized moments and unorganized moments, attacking transitions and set plays, and I would say we’re a relatively complete team in that sense — but now the dynamic has shifted a little bit.”
Early in the year, the Loons were able to draw the opposition forward, sit in a compact defensive shape, and then have big spaces for forwards Kelvin Yeboah and Tani Oluwaseyi to run into when they won the ball back.
Not surprisingly, after Minnesota’s success with that plan, the opposition is turning the tables on the Loons and doing the same thing to them.
Suddenly, it’s the opposition that’s sitting in compact defensive shapes. It’s the Loons struggling to play through the middle of the field, to create chances, to find spaces for attack.
The improvement, therefore, is going to have to come from going wide with the attacks — something the Loons did with some success several times in Saturday’s second half.
“Teams will work so hard to defend the space in behind, they’ll work so hard to stop the balls into the two number nines’ feet and the combinations off that,” Ramsay said. “Inevitably we’re going to be able to attack the side of the pitch, and we have players in those situations that can be really, really dangerous.”
The best chance came from center back Carlos Harvey, who came on as a second-half sub. Harvey made what’s becoming his trademark, an overlapping run down the outside, and swung in a cross that just barely eluded Oluwaseyi — when any more of a touch would have been a guaranteed goal.
