Last week's result defied all expectations. Entertainment value aside, it highlighted problems the Legion has had all year, namely, being able to hold a lead and play at full speed for an entire game. At this stage giving up points wastefully is not conducive to getting a playoff spot. As we showed earlier this week, that remains very much within the team's reach. But not if entirely avoidable mental errors aren't eradicated. This week's game in Tulsa (7:30pm, ESPN Select) won't go well if that doesn't happen.
FC Tulsa has never finished a season better than 7th in its conference and 13th overall. Thus it is a surprise to everyone—including themselves probably—that they find themselves 1st in the West with an 8-point gap and 3rd overall with just 8 games left. They have an excellent home record: 7-2-2 in league play and 1-1-0 in the Jägermeister Cup. They also lost at home in the Open Cup on penalties. That's a total of 4 home losses. The most recent of those was May 31st. The last league home loss was April 12th.
The opponent in that last home loss? The Birmingham Legion. Since then they have dropped just 2 points at home in 6 games and none since June 14th when they drew 1-1 with Phoenix (which was the same score as the Open Cup game before PKs).
To call ONEOK Field a fortress might be a bit of an overstatement. It is however a clear home-field advantage. The stadium was built for the Tulsa Drillers, a Double-A affiliate of the LA Dodgers. With Memphis 901 and its hideous AutoZone Park long gone it is probably the worst dual-purpose field used in the USL Championship. After the team played on one of the best grass fields in the Championship last week I asked Mark Briggs about this week's surface: "Half of it's great. Half's great. And then there's the, you know, obviously the baseball mound…it's really difficult to play out in that environment because usually you have the normal grass. Then you have the mound that's like an inch or something, a lot bigger, a lot higher, which is why you see balls pop up. It's brutal." Less than ideal, then, and possibly why a much-improved Tulsa team has been difficult to beat at home.
More than that, it's difficult to beat a team at its home twice in a season anyway. The first win was tight to say the least. Consider this:
That's the shooting chart from that game. The Legion's shots are to the left. Tulsa outshot Birmingham 27-8 overall. The teams were equal in shots on target at just 3 apiece. But 1 of the Legion shots was a PK. And, frankly, a PK that probably should not have been called. In the first half the Legion managed just one shot, a long-distance attempt by Enzo Martinez from way outside the box that went wide right. And that was in the 43rd minute. The only good thing about this is that Tulsa's shooting was abysmally bad.
That's atypical. Tulsa does have the most shots in the league with 305, but its conversion rate is also pretty effective at 17%, good enough for 8th equal. Quantity has a quality of its own, as they say, but when you have quantity of quality that's doubly good. The Legion's shooting stats, by the way, are 13th in both total shots (236) and conversion rate (16%). Last week probably helped those stats quite a bit.
Tulsa is also 4th in scoring with 37, which happens to be the same number of goals that the Legion has allowed. And they have given up 25, 3 fewer than the Three Sparks have scored.
All that being said, the Okies are coming off a string of somewhat disappointing games. They are 1-1-1 in the last 3 outings and have scored just twice in them. In the 1-1 draw with Hartford they were the beneficiaries of an own goal and the goal in the 1-0 win over Orange County was scored with a man advantage in a game they really deserved to lose. Most recently, they were blanked 0-2 in Colorado Springs. All 3 were on the road; in the last home game they hammered New Mexico United 5-2.
The squad the Legion will face tomorrow will likely be little changed from the previous meeting. Tulsa regularly plays with a 3-4-3, deploying the front 3 in all 3 possible ways (flat 3, 1 up top, 2 up top). Those 3 are generally Taylor Calheira, Khalil ElMedkhar and in recent games Eliot Goldthorp. Goldthorp joined Tulsa on loan from Lexington in June and looks to be sharing time with Jamie Webber who suited up against the Three Sparks.
The biggest threat is easily Calheira, who is tied with Ronaldo Damus, Wilmer Cabrera (El Paso Locomotive) and Matt Myers (Charleston Battery) for 5th with 10 goals. He has several players backing him up though, especially ElMedkhar and Owen Damm. All 3 are new to Tulsa this season and are the principal causes for the team's change in fortunes.
In contrast, the Legion roster will look very different. Phanuel Kavita is on international duty (Rwanda plays Nigeria tomorrow at 11:00am and Zimbabwe Tuesday at 8:00am in World Cup qualifying, both on ESPN Select). Ramiz Hamouda didn't play last time but is also on international duty with the US U-17 team playing a couple of friendlies in the Netherlands ahead of the World Cup in Qatar this November. Edwin Laszo (who came from Tulsa) is on yellow card suspension. Roman Torres and Danny Trejo are gone. Temi Ereku is out on loan. Kameron Lacey and Tyler Pasher are injured, as is Dawson McCartney, who was also out last time. Sebastian Tregarthen picked up a knock in training but is hopefully OK to play. Amir Daley, Jackson Travis and Peter-Lee Vassell are all recent additions to the squad. Vassell is the newest newcomer, although he has been training with the club for a few weeks. The Jamaican was back home but hasn't played a competitive game since late May when the country's season ended. He has extensive experience in the USL Championship and MLS and is very likely to start tomorrow.
The changes come both from necessity and as Briggs continues to try to instil his desired mindset. Mostly he wants the team to be completely committed for a full 90 minutes. He hasn't been getting that. "You watch Louisville. Best team in the league by a country mile. That DNA is running, tackling, communicating, competing. That's it! And they do that better than anyone else and they're in first place. The team we play on Saturday, Tulsa, it's exactly the same. They want to compete. They want to run and that's the first part of it."
Prediction: With a cobbled-together squad and Mark Briggs himself getting over being sick all week it will be very hard for the Legion to come away with points from this game. A draw would be an excellent outcome but to be brutally honest I don't see it happening.
(Excerpted from the Football Forge)
Cissoko will also be serving a suspension for Tulsa (accumulation), which can't hurt