The Hounds manage a wet three points.

We’re all familiar with frustrating losses and frustrating ties. This match was one of those rare frustrating wins. When by far the worst team in the league comes to town you expect the Hounds to get three points a lot easier than that. It took 78 minutes until Kerr was able to take advantage of a deflection and burry it past the Montreal keeper. If it was back and forth all game and it just happened to take that long for a goal then alright. What makes this frustrating is the Hounds dominated play pretty much all night but were only able to squeak out one goal near the end. It’s not like Montreal is a defensive powerhouse either. Before this match they were letting up an average of 1.6 goals a game. The Hounds find themselves still struggling to finish chances. I’ve mentioned it before but if you take away the three 5+ goal games, they’ve only managed to score more than one goal twice in league play. They aren’t exactly blowing the doors off every week. The big games skew the numbers. To Steffens credit he hasn’t been afraid to experiment with the striker position in his quest to find production. I’ve lost count how many guys have started up top this year. Cabrilo, Green, and Okiomah have all rotated through within the last month or so to various effect. Dantas was back on the bench this week so we may see him start again. While the midfield has been excellent and has been able to carry the team, I’d feel more confident about a deep playoff run this year if we started to see something out of a striker.

To be fair to the Hounds though they did play a game on Wednesday that went into E.T. and Montreal had a full weeks rest. They did get their first league shut out this season, and the back line looked pretty solid. The three points from this match keeps the Hounds in the 6th and last playoff position. They’ll need everyone’s best performance next weekend as they (and the Steel Army) head to league leading Rochester for a tough away match up.

Notes

• Kerr is a perpetual motion machine. Boundless energy.
• A tip of the hat for Calle Brown. His second professional start and first clean sheet.
• Man, Mike Green, jack of all trades. At this rate he’s going to start at all 11 positions by the end of the season. I hope he gets a free sandwich or something.
• Nice to see long time Riverhound Sterling Flunder back in the line up.
• The Hounds had a whopping eleven corners this game and hooollyyy crap were they mostly terrible. It’s like they forgot you’re supposed to get it into the box, not the other side of the field. As we saw against D.C. United corners can win you games, and the Hounds really need to address how ineffective theirs have become.
• Nothing like a regular season attendance gut punch to quell the positive feelings from Wednesday. Hounds barely crack 1,000 for one of if not the lowest ticket sales of the season.

Abbreviated recap this week.

#UNLEASH