Finishing remains focus for Rowdies

Posted Jul 18, 2010 by Nick Murray

Updated Jul 18, 2010 at 12:04 PM

With a full week to prepare before a pair of games on Thursday and Sunday, the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies got back to work on regaining their scoring touch at practice on Sunday morning.

With only two goals in the last seven games, the team worked on two-on-two finishing drills to close out practice as Coach Paul Dalglish tried to give his players confidence a confidence boost ahead of their match with Rochester on Thursday night. Dalglish said the team needed to make more of the chances it was creating and start to get back to the way the team was playing during its seven-game undefeated streak earlier this season.

“I’ve not been happy with the amount of goals we’ve been scoring in recent games,” Dalglish said. “There was a spell where we were creating loads and loads of chances in games, every game, and it’s kind of dried up a little bit, the chances we’re creating. Some people might say that’s coincided with (Aaron) Wheeler being out, but we’ve got to find a plan ‘B’. Wheeler’s not made of stone, so we can’t rely on him every game, we’ve got to find another way to find chances without him.”

As far as facing two games in four days, Rowdies captain Julian Valentin said it shouldn’t affect the way the team prepares in training, with enough time between the two games for the side to recover after facing Rochester for Sunday’s game with Miami.

“Especially now it’s not like we can leave a little bit in the tank on Thursday with Sunday on our minds,” Valentin said. “It’s going to be a tough week with a couple of tough games, but it’s business as usual, really, with a little bit more of an edge.”

With the two-day break between the games, there probably won’t be any workouts scheduled between the two games, but Dalglish agreed that there should be enough time for the side to play with the same intensity it did against Puerto Rico against Rochester and still have enough to produce a good performance against Miami.

“I think you won’t be doing much in-between, but I think the Thursday-Sunday, you can completely recover in that space of time,” Dalglish said. “When it’s Thursday-Saturday, the players can’t completely recover, it normally takes 48 hours to recover, but as long as we get the guys 100 percent ready for the game on Thursday, we don’t really need to do anything different to our normal build-up to a game.”