Following the Columbus Crew's first home loss of the season on Wednesday night, Head Coach Caleb Portersaid one could look into the favorable stats and perhaps not-so-favorable calls, but at the end of the day, Porter concluded, "I still didn’t think we put into the game what we needed to, to ensure the three points."
After conceding the opening goal, Porter commended the group's ability to equalize just before the half via another Gyasi Zardestally – his 10th of the year – but at the end of the day, he gave no excuses knowing three points were there for the taking against an otherwise struggling Montreal Impact side.
"This is like your classic MLS result where you have a team at the top of the table playing a team at the bottom of the table, it’s a total trap game and you see it all the time," Porter said in his post-match press conference.
"We’re better than that, we’re better than that. The best teams don’t lose this game, but you do see with a lot of teams have this result happen. We don’t want this result to happen, especially with the goals that we have and the standards that we have."
HIGHLIGHTS | Crew SC 1, Montreal Impact 2
Porter's disappointment and the team's recent inconsistency is not falling on deaf ears, as captain Jonathan Mensahmade clear.
"We’ve done a good job from the start of the season – the restart – we just need to get back to what we do best. We need to watch film and get together again and start doing what we were doing in our previous games," Mensah said.
"We know we can do better; we can’t really lose a game like this. Obviously, we lost it. We need to put that behind us and go into the next game very strong, because if you want to be a championship team, you need to be consistent, and we haven’t been that in recent games. We need to pick it up and do better."
Now in third-place in the Supporters' Shield race, the solution to Wednesday's let-down is a straightforward but trying test, Porter said, as the Black & Gold must head down on three days' rest to Orlando City SC (8-2-6, 30 pts.), who sit just one point behind in the East.
"We have to make up for today, because when you don’t take care of business at home against teams you should beat, then now you have to do it the hard way," Porter said.
"And so, the guys are going to have to now go and grind on the road, and we have a bunch of games coming up on the road, and we have to make up for this."
Notably, the Purple Lions have won each of the last three meetings overall, including two in Orlando.
Kickoff on Sunday is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET at Exploria Stadium [SportsTime Ohio, FOX Sports GO App, 97.1 FM (English), ColumbusCrewSC.com (Spanish)].
