The Los Angeles Football Club wants off its early-season rollercoaster ride.
Stability was the message in training this week as LAFC seeks its first away result following losses in Salt Lake City, Minnesota and Colorado.
“We need to go prove that we can win on the road,” defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “In this league, to set yourself up for a good run in the playoffs you need home-field advantage, you need a high seed in the conference, so these road games are going to be huge for that.”
In the afterglow of a hard-fought 2-1 victory at BMO Stadium over the Galaxy, LAFC visits Providence Park and the Portland Timbers seeking to curtail those loop-the-loop sensations.
“That has determined the focus of the week, really,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo said. “The players have reacted positively to that and I’m looking forward to an intense in-conference match. It always is tough in Portland.”
The two sides are evenly split in the regular season, sharing a 5-5-5 record, with the Timbers finding results on their artificial turf field, going 4-2-1.
Last week, Portland (2-3-2, 8 points) engineered its biggest comeback since joining MLS in 2011, rallying from three goals down during the last half hour to earn a point in Kansas City and end a three-match losing streak.
Prior to the late-game heroics, Portland head coach Phil Neville, the 46-year-old former Manchester United star, called his team’s first half performance “unacceptable,” a failing of the basics and the group’s mentality.
However, five of the Timbers’ 14 goals have occurred in the last 15 minutes of matches, tops in the MLS to this point.
The Black & Gold (3-3-1, 10 points) head to the Pacific Northwest for the Timbers’ only home match over a half-dozen dates from the end of March through the start of May.
Saturday’s midday contest is the 200th regular-season MLS affair for LAFC since their debut in 2018.
For the second consecutive match, LAFC will cross paths with…
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