Hartford Athletic open a four-game homestand on Saturday with a visit from El Paso Locomotive. The Latics are looking to continue their strong start to the USL Championship season, where they are on nine points from five games and unbeaten in league play.
That unbeaten start, which has come with four of five league games and six of seven games in all competitions on the road, has Brendan Burke feeling good.
“I’m pleased," Burke told The Blazing Musket. "With the clean sheet, that’s the third in four games on the road, that's a fantastic start to the season. It shows commitment, shows grittiness, it shows concentration level. All great parts of a recipe for a good team.”
The last of those games, at Miami, was perhaps a somewhat disappointing nil-nil draw, especially as Hartford had rotated heavily for the preceding Open Cup game in order to stay fresh. Burke felt that his side had done enough to win that game, but in football, that’s just sometimes how it goes.
“We left goals on the table," he said. "We tripled their expected goals on their field. You should win a game like that, but that's going to happen, too. There's going to be days where you go cold in front of goal. They made a couple goal line clearances. You know, they were throwing bodies in front of everything. I think we had eight or nine shots inside 8 yards or 9 yards, and that usually equates to a couple goals. So we're realistic about it.”
With Hartford now returning home for an extended period, Burke and his side can shift their mentality from grinding out results to taking care of business at Trinity Health Stadium.
“It [the mentality] is shifting to, you have to capitalize on all that good work you put in because that was torture, honestly," Burke said. "We were playing Wednesday, Saturday, Saturday, Wednesday, on the road for weeks at a time. So it's really important that we, you know, honour the work we've already done with with our effort and attention to detail here at home and also show our home fans what we're capable of.”
As for Saturday’s opposition, El Paso presents a very different challenge from Hartford’s other league opponents so far this season, with Burke contrasting them to the Latics’ previous home opponents, Indy Eleven.
“Very different from say, Indy, who were like an NBA team," Burke said. "I mean those guys were huge. They can run.These guys are a little more intricate, a little cleaner on the ball. They will play shorter. They love a big switch of play. So we focused a lot this week on choking that out and trying to keep them on one side of the field so we're not getting dragged back and forth or flattening when we have to across the five. So we get access to the big ball as it gets played. So I think this game is going to be far more nuanced than the Indy game. And I think they have two of the hottest, you know, certainly most experienced forwards in the league in in Rubio and Moreno. I have a ton of respect for those guys. The way they transition is so clean and precise. So we have to be really careful and, and focus on, you know, potentially killing plays in their half of the field.”
Rubio Rubin and Amando Moreno have each scored four goals on the season, putting them tied for the league lead in the early going, and they certainly present a better attacking pairing than Hartford has seen in any game so far. Behind their dynamic attacking duo, Locomotive have scored at least two goals in every league game this season, and Hartford may need to score a couple just to keep up.
Burke emphasized this as well, and suggested that within the constraints of his roster, he’ll be fielding an attacking lineup on Saturday night.
“We're always here to score a couple goals at home and I think our lineup will reflect that when it, you know, when it comes out tomorrow," he said. "We want to be on the front foot. We want to create opportunities and we've done a good job of that so far this year.”
One wrinkle for the game is that while Hartford are not at full strength, El Paso has a busy week coming up, including an Open Cup meeting with MLS side Houston Dynamo. It’s unclear how highly El Paso manager Junior Gonzalez rates the Open Cup, or how heavily he might rotate his squad in anticipation of that fixture, but it could well be the case that in a meeting between two of the last unbeaten sides in the league, neither one is at full strength.
