FSM Essential Recap: Lights FC vs 901 FC- Game 4

FSM Essential Recap: Lights FC vs Memphis 901- Game 4

Franchise Sports Media

The Las Vegas Lights FC fell 1-0 short to Memphis 901 FC in their second home game of the season.

The Las Vegas Lights hosted Memphis 901 at Cashman Field for their fourth game of the season. Unfortunately, they were held scoreless and lost the game to a Jeremy Kelly goal in the 51st minute of the second half. 

The Lights came out with a few changes to their lineup since their thrilling 5-4 win on Wednesday against El Paso Locomotive, including a switch back to the 4-3-3 formation rather than the 4-4-2 played in Texas. Abraham Romero replaced Tomas Romero as the starting goalkeeper. Alejandro Lara remained as one of the center backs, but Julian Gaines replaced Dekel Keinan as the other center back. Morten Bjorshol kept his place at right back, and Mohamed Traore was back in his left back spot in place of Alvaro Quezada, who instead played in the midfield in place of Frank Daroma, who sat this game out due to the red card he picked up on Wednesday’s game. Daniel Crisostomo kept his place in the midfield, and Daniel Trejo switched back from left midfield to left winger along with Daniel Musovski and Cal Jennings up top as forwards. All three forwards kept their starting positions from last game. 

Tonight was just not the night for the Lights.

The first half was pretty uneventful in terms of possession and shots on target, as both teams seemed to be pretty even on both sides of the spectrum. The Lights were caught off guard on one of their attacking attempts in the 51st minute and suffered a counter attack goal by Kelly, who received a long ball from Laurent Kissiedou and swiftly chipped it over Lights keeper Abraham Romero. 

The Lights controlled the majority of the game from that point on. The ball was kept in Memphis’ half by the Lights, but not in any form of danger. As we know, the Lights have been brilliant on their counter attacking play this season. The majority of their goals came from counter attacks in the first three games of the season, but the players weren’t able to get their counter attacking play on today. The main reason for that is how Memphis formed themselves after scoring the opening goal. Memphis made sure to keep a sufficient number of players in the backline when they were attacking to make sure that they didn’t suffer the deadly runs of Musovski, Jennings and Trejo. On defense, they parked the bus the majority of the game and seemed to be focused on keeping the lead the way it is, rather than attacking to extend the lead. 

On the bright side, the Lights were forced to try something new in their attacking ways in this game. Although their counter attacking style has proven to be effective in previous games, it also proved to be containable in this game. The Lights got to work on maintaining possession and keeping the pace of the game in their control, which is easily one of the most important things when it comes to winning games against certain teams. 

Crossing was also another thing that the Lights seemed to be working on today. Bruce El-Mesmari made his season home debut for the team tonight in a 75th minute substitution in place of Traore. The 19 year old served many dangerous crosses into the 18 yard box from the left side, and right back Bjorshol served some crosses that were equally as dangerous from the right side. 

The Lights didn’t do as bad as the scoreboard said they did tonight. The team definitely seemed like they lacked some confidence in the attacking half this game. The defense did their job aside from a couple of slip ups, one of which ultimately led to the game winning goal. We have seen the Lights bounce back very well from a loss, just like after they won two consecutive games since the season opening loss against New Mexico United. Let’s just hope that we could see the team bounce back well from this loss.

The Lights will be back in action again this Friday, April 1st, in South Carolina to face off against the Charleston Battery. Make sure to catch this matchup on ESPN+ at 4 PM PT. 

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-Murad Omaish – Franchise Sports Media

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