The Atlanta Silverbacks open the 2015 Fall Season on Saturday, July 4th with largely the same roster they had at end of the Spring Season. Steward Ceus, who started the last seven league matches and the US Open Cup 4th round match was called up to the Haitian National Team for the Gold Cup. CJ Cochran will step into goal while Ceus is off for the Gold Cup. The team is unbeaten in the three league matches and one Cup match that Cochran started. Four players on the roster played every single minute available in league play with several others playing in every single league match. With only two mid-week matches in the spring season, the depth of the roster was not challenged. That will change in the Fall Season. The Silverbacks will play four mid-week matches, including an odd home-and-away with the Cosmos on October 4th and 7th.
The club ended the Spring Season at the bottom of the table and has quite a few issues to address. The most important is the lack of goals. The club had the fewest shots on goal and had the second fewest number of goals scored. What is more alarming is that the club scored four of their seven goals in the first three matches. The defense started very strong, keeping the club in most matches this season. The last few matches produced sub-standard performances from the defense, allowing four goals to Edmonton, admittedly a very productive offense, and three goals to the Rowdies in the Spring Finale. The results of those matches seemed to destroy any confidence the players had in their ability to win a match. After allowing a goal to both the Rowdies and the Red Bulls, the squad appeared dejected, lacking the confidence in their ability to come from behind. Neither one of those matches turned out well for us.
What is the club doing to address the lack of goals? The team scrimmaged with the Reserve side on Tuesday morning, starting in a 3-4-3 formation that Manager Gary Smith said is something being strongly considered. The squad does have some injury concerns, with several regular starters being held out of the scrimmage, and those might prevent the changes in formation. While there were quite a few trialists on display during the scrimmage, it is not clear if any of them would be signed for the beginning of the Fall Season. Gary Smith commented that he is looking far and wide for an experienced striker. Our current goal-scoring leader is Shaka Bangura, who has netted only twice and has some knee concerns that kept him out of the scrimmage. The club is evaluating their options, like all clubs do this time of year, but is limited in what they can do by the ownership situation.
In order to avoid a third straight season of finishing at the bottom of the table, the team is going to have put the ball in the back of the net much more often. Most people around the league think the squad is more talented than the results have shown. The coaching staff is exhausting all of their admittedly limited options to lift the team off of the bottom of the table. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Paul has a podcast called Gorilla Talk covering everything Atlanta Silverbacks from match previews shows , and so much more give the podcast a follow on twitter @AtlGorillaTalk . Here is a recent episode of Gorilla Talk :
