LAFC looking to shake season-long struggles on road
Los Angeles Football Club coach Bob Bradley cannot explain why since the middle of last year his team has struggled away from Banc of California Stadium.
“It’s something that we know and talked about,” Bradley said on Thursday. “Can’t honestly put a finger on exactly what’s happened but we’ve got to continue to try and find the right way in away games.”
Winless in four tries on the road in 2021 with three goals to their opponents’ seven, LAFC’s woes compounded during a 2-1 loss to Sporting Kansas City one week ago.
That match, the first of three consecutive away dates for LAFC, turned bad after defender Tristan Blackmon was red carded in the 58th minute.
In eight of the LAFC’s 10 games this season they scored first, however an inability to add goals — LAFC only has 12 through 10 matches compared to 22 in 2018, 26 in 2019 and 21 in 2020 — coupled with mental and physical mistakes keep undercutting quality stretches of soccer.
While preparing to travel to Real Salt Lake this week, Bradley was hard on the whole team — in a positive way, he explained — over the lapses that resulted in LAFC giving ground to Western Conference foes instead of climbing up the standings following the weakest start in club history
“It’s been a very important topic since after the game because we never would have built the team and played some of the
Today: LAFC at Real Salt Lake, 7 p.m., Ch. 13
matches that we played, had guys had such great seasons, if we were just a team that focused on mistakes,” the coach said. “That’s impossible. You focus on playing your best football. You do try to correct mistakes. You do try to learn from things you’ve done wrong, but football is not a game where you spend all your time crying about a bad decision, a bad touch.”
Said LAFC forward Danny Musovski:” When you’re going through a tough time offensively where rhythm isn’t right the only thing you do is work through it. That’s what we’re planning to do. Trying to fine tune it in training and hopefully the end product is on the field.”
LAFC’s next chance to get things right comes at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah, a venue that has treated Bradley’s side well despite a reputation as one of the most difficult places to play in Major League Soccer.
The last time the Black & Gold took three points away from Los Angeles they beat Real Salt Lake 3-1 in October 2020.
Upon joining MLS in 2018, LAFC has secured 10 out of a possible 12 points in Utah while outscoring RSL by a two-to-one margin.
Tonight’s affair marks the first full capacity match since March 2020 at Rio Tinto, where RSL is 2-1-3 this season.
With a game in hand, Salt Lake (3-2-4, 13 points) sit two spots above 10th place LAFC (3-4-3, 12 points) in the Western Conference.