Injuries no excuse for second straight Fury loss, coach says
‘We didn’t have that quality in the final third you need to win games’
When explaining what went wrong following Saturday’s 2-1 homefield loss to Jacksonville Armada FC, Paul Dalglish could have used his team’s injuries as an excuse.
But excuses aren’t going to fix anything, and the Ottawa Fury FC coach knows better.
As Dalglish pointed out a few days earlier, with captain Julian de Guzman the latest to join the list of Fury FC players sidelined — he’ll be out four to six weeks with a knee tendon injury — the guys who can’t play would make a pretty good NASL team on their own.
“It seems to be one thing after another this year with injuries,” Dalglish said. “(Bryan) Olivera (who is injured) — the last time we played them had two assists. We lost de Guzman two days before. That’s not the reason why we lost. We lost because we didn’t have that quality in the final third you need to win games. We had good enough players on the pitch today to win the game, so I don’t want to make excuses.
“We’ve got to be better. We have to work away; we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got to dust ourselves down, have another good week of training. and try and get the win on Saturday.”
So Fury FC will suck it up, try to forget the loss to Jacksonville and move on to its next match, in Fort Lauderdale.
“We have to put it behind us, focus on next weekend and try to set things right, away from home,” said Fury FC’s Carl Haworth, who had his team’s sole goal versus Armada FC.
It’s been an up-and-down season for Ottawa, which looks like a top team on some occasions, and then turns around and lets games get away — a 1-0 loss a week ago in Indy and the setback to Jacksonville should at least have been draws.
“Coming out of Indy with a draw would have been great,” Haworth said. “That one was tough to take. Again (Saturday), you don’t want to be giving up late goals at home. We had our chances. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of frustration in the locker-room right now, based on the results.”
The winning goal was scored off a free kick, leading to an Alhassane Keita header that found the net in the 87th minute. It was Keita’s second goal of the game.
“Set plays have to be addressed,” Haworth said. “We were close to getting one (Saturday) off a set piece. If we can focus on that a bit more, maybe score late on a set piece instead of giving one up, that would be a big difference.”
The coach says he doesn’t doubt his players; he knows what his team can do on the pitch.
“I believe in every single one of those players in the locker-room,” Dalglish said. “We’ve just got to be better in front of the goal, start creating more chances and start scoring more goals.”
Saturday’s game was played in a steady, at times heavy, rain; lightning delayed the game half an hour.
Losing a game that looked like it was there for the taking left Fury FC with a sour taste.
“It’s unacceptable,” Dalglish said. “We’ll watch the video and find out who’s accountable. That’s two games in a row where we’ve been in position to get something out of the game and we haven’t defended a set piece late in the game. It can’t happen.
“I think we controlled possession in the second half; we moved the ball quite well. We just lacked that bit of creativity to play the final pass. It’s tough, but we have to keep going.”
Up next for Ottawa is an Aug. 20 date in Fort Lauderdale, against the Strikers. Ottawa returns home for an Aug. 24 date with Miami FC.