Riverhounds fail to capitalize vs. struggling San Antonio side

The Riverhounds reverted back to their own ways on Saturday night as they were held to a 0-0 draw by a struggling San Antonio side at Highmark Stadium to push their unbeaten run to six games, but leave the fans unhappy as they were booed off the field. 

This was a draw, this was technically a point gained, but in all honesty, this was two points dropped. It was a draw, but it felt like a loss. A team came into town losing their last three and with two wins in their last ten and the Riverhounds couldn’t even get a goal.

The Riverhounds had the edge in terms of attacking intent, forcing two early corners off the back of some tricky play from Langston Blackstock who was trying to replace the flair that the benched Junior Etou usually brings to the team, whilst Emmanuel Johnson almost got lucky with the first shot of the game, firing a powerful shot low and hard at Pablo Sisniega, with the ball just sneaking through his legs before being able to quickly turn around and grab it before it rolled any further.

The pressure continued with the Hounds steaming forward like many of the trains that populate the tracks beside Highmark Stadium, with Robbie Mertz sliding in for a ball that was just inches in front of him, Kazaiah Sterling having a shot blocked and Johnson firing into the side netting after another ball behind the back line. 

A large part of why the action wasn’t flowing in the first half could have been down to the Riverhounds’ team selection because whilst San Antonio were there for the taking, the one person who you would want running the show wasn’t on the field in the form of Etou. With the quick run of games for the team, the usual starting left-back was placed on the bench to be replaced by Luke Biasi, who doesn’t exactly have the attacking flair of the Frenchman, as was demonstrated when he curled a cross about five yards behind Johnson in the box with the forward pretty open. 

The second half started off much as it did the first, with the Riverhounds piling on the pressure and getting the first attempt away with Blackstock dragging a shot across the face of goal after a pretty slick move down the left-hand side (although not involving Biasi). 

As the game got into the final stages and the crowd brought out the Mexican Wave (the ultimate sign that a game doesn’t have anything going on), the only question was going to be how long it would be before the Riverhounds went for broke and made changes to break down a very stubborn San Antonio defense. 

Danny Griffin had the chance to finish off what might have been the Goal of the Season, Sterling performed an inch-perfect backheel flick to get a Blackstock pass over the San Antonio backline, Griffin charged onto the loose ball and bore down on goal but fired his shot high into the Paul Child Stand.

The changes eventually came with Bob Lilley finally turning to Etou alongside Edward Kizza and Kenardo Forbes in an attempt to win the game, and the impact of the three men was instantly felt with Etou causing his usual trouble down the left side and leaving a few defenders trailing as he charged into the box before trapping a bouncing ball and firing just wide a few minutes later, making you wonder why it took Lilley so long to bring him into the fray.

Lilley answered that question in his post-game press conference, stating that his decision was more to do with Etou's energy levels after the recent stretch of games: 

"I don't know that he could have done the work from the opening whistle. We thought about playing him. He was also on the trainer's table with hip pointers on both sides." 

The Riverhounds had a few more chances befroe the game would end, but rather than run you through them, I'll just leave these stats here to tell you just how bad it was:

USL Match Center

Stats from the game between the Riverhounds and San Antonio FC

That's right, 15 shots in total, but only 1 was on target.

After the Sacramento game I said “for now at least, the Riverhounds have given the fans just that little glimmer of hope that the team has finally turned things around, and maybe this time it will be for good”, but it looks like I and the fans might have been fooled. 

Yes, six games unbeaten is a good thing on the surface, but when you dive down and examine the results that went into it, especially these last three games, you see a repeat of what has held this team back all season, and that’s inconsistency, which as we approach the final stretch, is what will kill this team.

And Lilley knows it, because he addressed it after the game:

"We're paying a little bit for leaving it so long. If we'd have had this type of urgency sooner, we'd have more points and we wouldn't have this need to be almost perfect.

"This team is getting better as we speak. Hopefully, we can stay unbeaten. I told you guys 48 [points] was the magic number a couple of weeks ago ... we have to win seven games and have three losses. Hopefully, we'll tie a couple and that'll get us to 50."

There is time to correct this, there is time for them to put things right, but not a lot. If this team wants to go on a deep run in the playoffs, they are going to need to get ‘hot’, but do you have any faith in them turning it on when it really matters? On tonight’s showing at least, I don’t.