That was disappointing. RIFC lost for a 2nd week in a row, falling 1-0 away to Orange County SC late Saturday night. It is the first time all season that we’ve lost consecutive games. Khano Smith has previously said that good teams don’t lose back to back games. So are we no longer a good team? Were we ever a good team? What is going on with this team lately? We’ll take a look at all of that, but first we unfortunately need to go over what happened Saturday night.

Despite the bad result, we actually started the game pretty well. We created some really good chances in the first half and honestly were unlucky to not go ahead. This chance from Stephen Turnbull really should have gone in if not for some great goalkeeping from Orange County’s Colin Shutler.

Noah Fuson did well driving with the ball and playing the ball out wide to Herivaux. Some would tell you that Fuson had a terrible game but this tells me otherwise. Turnbull also did well, getting into his favorite right half space. He maybe could have put it just a little bit further out of Shutler’s reach, but I think Shutler still did well to make that save.

We created some more chances but of course were unable to convert any of them. And then, this happened:

It pains me to say, but what on earth was Frank Nodarse doing there? He’s supposed to be playing left CB but found himself all the way up in the middle of the field near the center circle. This left a massive hole on the left side of our defense and once the ball was played out to Bryce Jamison, we were in trouble. Jamison fired it past Jackson Lee and gave his side the 1-0 lead.

We had plenty of chances to get one back in the 2nd half, including this one from Albert Dikwa:

This is another one that I would chalk up to a really good save from Shutler, as he tipped this one onto the bar. Dikwa had another volley about 10 minutes later, but that one was more straight at the goalkeeper. Finally, we had this Clay Holstad header in stoppage time:

As we know, this one wouldn’t go in either and the game would end in a 1-0 defeat.

The reason I shared all these clips is to point out that we had a lot of chances in the game. You may remember that I called a 3-1 RIFC win. That was obviously really optimistic and I ended up getting it totally wrong. But maybe it wasn’t as wrong as it seemed at first glance…? Maybe I’m not that bad at predictions. I probably am that bad, but I’ll still maintain that we really should have had at least 1 or 2 goals and probably could have gotten 3.

Before getting into anything else, we have to once again look at the starting 11

One of the biggest questions coming into this game revolved around LWB Jojea Kwizera. Kwizera was coming back from international duty. In the Prematch Lookout, I wrote that if he was available, he should come right back in to the starting 11 at his LWB spot. If not, the likely option was to put Fuson out wide and start JJ up front. Neither of these ended up happening. Gabi Alves was given the opportunity to start and Fuson kept his spot as a 2nd number 10 alongside Jack Panayotou.

The other changes that happened were Jackson Lee starting in goal, Nodarse starting on the left side of the back 3 and Zach Herivaux starting over Clay Holstad. Koke didn’t travel with the team and was listed as out due to personal reasons. Hopefully all is well for Koke and his family. Morris Duggan was listed on the injury report as out with a lower body injury, so Nodarse ended up replacing him in defense. There was no injury designation for Clay Holstad however, so Herivaux starting for him was likely a coach’s decision.

Firstly, Nodarse and Alves on the left side didn’t work. Orange County’s goal was caused by Nodarse being out of position and Alves not tracking back to cover him. But even outside of that, I don’t think it was a great game for Nodarse. And Alves was mostly invisible unfortunately. I feel bad for Gabi, as I think he’d fit much better as a traditional LB and playing as a wingback hasn’t suited him.

I do think that Herivaux had a great game for us. He was all over the field and even got himself out wide at times when need be to help out in attack. With this performance, I am definitely in favor of seeing him start for us moving forward. I just feel that it should be for Ybarra and not for Holstad. I once wrote that Ybarra was irreplaceable in our midfield and that I wanted to see him play alongside Herivaux. We got that on Saturday night and I think it worked pretty well. But at this point, I think we need more dynamism in midfield. Holstad and Herivaux can both provide that and they’re both good enough players to be able to find the right balance if paired together.

Lastly on the lineup, I just wanted to mention that Lee had a decent game and Kwizera looked really good after coming on. Given Lee’s performances this season, highlighted by his performance in our 5-2 win at Louisville, we should all have a lot of confidence in him if we do need him to play more. I don’t think he was asked to do a ton in this game and the goal that he conceded really wasn’t his fault. He might have been able to make a save there but he shouldn’t have been put in that position in the first place. As for Kwizera, he started playing really well after he came back from international duty with Rwanda last time around. That, combined with his performance Saturday night, should give us confidence that he’ll continue to be really good for us when he’s available.

All of this really leads to the big question about RIFC as we head into the final 6 games of the season:

At this point in the season, I don’t really know. Ryan did a great job on the Match Reaction Pod with his patented slides going over the three different phases of our season so far:

I think that does a great job telling the story of the season so far and where we’re currently at. At the end of the day, right now we’re just a team that is failing to take advantage of our opportunities in front of goal. We struggled to start the season, hit a great run of form through the summer, and are now regressing back to a team that simply can’t score. The positive coming out of this game is that we created plenty of chances as opposed to the Pittsburgh game where we never really looked like scoring. However, we failed to score in either game and results are results. With 6 games remaining, we do have enough time to turn it around but it really has to start now.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this is that on paper we have a good enough squad to get the goals. Albert Dikwa and JJ Williams should both be able to lead the line and get more goals for us. Aside from them, we have plenty of other players who can and have contributed at times this season. Kwizera, Turnbull, Fuson, Holstad and Panayotou to name a few and that’s even leaving out Nodarse who is still 2nd on the team in goals from his CB position. That being said, recent results are starting to make me wonder if I’m really just overrating this squad. To be at the top, both individually and collectively as a team, you need consistency. We really haven’t had that all year.

I’m going to end this with a quick look at the standings:

With this loss and other results, we have moved down to 8th. We’re still in a playoff spot currently but if our form continues, there’s a very real chance we don’t make the playoffs. The playoff race is still really tightly congested, with us only being 3 points out of 5th, although Indy Eleven do have a game in hand. However, I’m starting to focus more on the teams below us and 3 of those teams could all catch us if we don’t turn this around. That really scares me.

As always, I’ll be back later this week to preview our upcoming home match against FC Tulsa. The team will definitely need our support at that one and I know all of us will bring it. We’ve all seen what this team is capable of and hopefully we can get back to winning ways this weekend. All I have left to say now is UP THE TIDE!