Poor run of form gradually eroded morale
Orlando City midfielder Will Johnson isn’t sure when this season went off the rails from a morale standpoint.
The Lions got off to a rough start but bounced back and won six consecutive matches. They followed that with nine consecutive losses – coach Jason Kreis was fired after the sixth loss of that streak – and haven’t been able to right the ship under new coach James O’Connor.
Johnson said there wasn’t one point in the season where morale turned around. It was a gradual process.
“It just kind of happens with results,” the 31-year-old veteran midfielder said before training on Tuesday. “The longer that you get into a bad streak, the harder it is to get out of it. Early on in the streak, when Jason was still around, we continued to get frustrated with those mistakes and instead of finding a way out of it, we made things worse.
“Guys started trying too much and when you want something so bad to end and the harder you try the more you kind of paralyze yourself in terms of getting results and getting out of it. You need to be more relaxed and we got tense. We got nervous. We got anxious. Those are all adjectives that ultimately lead to more and more bad results.”
Orlando City has three matches left in the season, two of them at home. The Lions play the Seattle Sounders at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday at Orlando City Stadium.
With the continued run of bad results – Orlando City has just one win in its last 22 league matches – Johnson said it’s become tough to reach the younger players on the team.