Valour hoping break helps cure scoring woes

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This article was published 18/05/2019 (2644 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Four goals in five games. One goal in their past three.

You don’t have to be a soccer expert to know that’s not going to cut it.

On Thursday night, Valour FC’s scoring woes continued. They were held off the score sheet for the second time this season, as Hamilton’s Forge FC dealt them a 2-0 defeat at IG Field. At the halfway point of the spring season, Valour find themselves below .500 with a 2-3-0 record.

Nobody on Valour FC is making excuses, but there’s definitely several factors that may be leading to their struggles on offence. For starters, they’ve played five matches in 16 days. In less than 2½ weeks, they’ve travelled to Victoria and Calgary and played three games at home. That’s a brutal schedule.

It also hasn’t helped that some of their best attacking players have been fighting injuries early in this first season of the Canadian Premier League.

Scottish-born Canadian forward Calum Ferguson, who was a standout in training camp, suffered a concussion in the pre-season and missed the first two games. Dynamic attacker Ali Musse started the season with an injury and was eased into the lineup. Star midfielder Michael Petrasso, who scored on a penalty kick in the home opener, has missed the past two games with a hamstring injury.

And no injury has been reported, but veteran English striker Stephen Hoyle is coming off a season in New Zealand and a hectic travel schedule to get to Winnipeg. Five games in 16 days is definitely not what Hoyle needed, as he has yet to play a full 90 minutes despite being one of the most accomplished scorers on the roster.

Also, Winnipegger Marco Bustos officially signed on May 7 and is expected to play a key role on offence with his playmaking ability. He’s started the past two games, but with less than two weeks to get comfortable with his new team, he’s going to need more time to develop chemistry.

Add all of that together and it very well could be your answer. But it doesn’t really matter what the reason is. What’s important is that Valour FC figures it out in the next two weeks before they play again.

Their next match isn’t until June 1, when they face FC Edmonton on the road.

“If you look at the actual style of football, no team has outplayed us,” head coach Rob Gale said after Friday’s training session at Memorial Park Turf Field behind Glenlawn Collegiate.

“That’s what’s positive in five games. What’s not positive is you’re only seeing six points. We could be more, we possibly should be more, but if you don’t put the ball in the net, and you give them goals instead of them earning them, that’s what’s going to happen. I think the collective is we know we can play with anybody and outplay most teams, I would say, if we’re at it and on our game. But we’ve got to turn that into creation and chances.”

Outside of Musse taking a pass off his chest in the box and drilling a shot toward Forge’s keeper Triston Henry early in the first half, there weren’t too many chances for Valour in Thursday night’s defeat. Valour had 10 shots directed at the net, but only two hit the target.

Bustos said you can’t point the finger at one specific reason for the lack of chances.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” said the 23-year-old, who joined Valour from the OKC Energy FC of the USL Championship League.

“I would say probably sometimes one pass too many, sometimes a little bit too late, sometimes taking a shot outside of the box instead of taking another touch to come into the box. Just a little bit of indecisiveness. But when one goal comes, they’ll start flushing in.”

They also need to do a much better job on their set pieces. In the first half of Thursday’s match, Valour had six corner kicks and all they had to show for it was a one-goal deficit as Forge gained possession of one of them and sent forward Anthony Novak on a breakaway to open the scoring in the eighth minute of the game.

“We’ve got to convert,” Gale said.

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“You’ve seen it. It cost us a couple times… I think the league is about 30 to 40 per cent of goals from set pieces right now. It’s another phase of the game, and maybe with more understanding and repetition that will come, but we need to improve that.”

Bustos said the team isn’t discouraged, and with two weeks to work on their game, they’re confident they can be a high-powered attack in the second half of the spring season.

“We got a lot of guys that can score, even myself, all the attacking players, we all have goals in us. They’ll start coming.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31

Taylor Allen
Reporter

Taylor Allen is a sports reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Taylor was the Vince Leah intern in the Free Press newsroom twice while earning his joint communications degree/diploma at the University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic. He signed on full-time in 2019 and mainly covers the Blue Bombers, curling, and basketball. Read more about Taylor.

Every piece of reporting Taylor produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.