Preview and Scouting Report: With little room for error, Riverhounds head to Birmingham in search for points

With their backs against the wall, the Riverhounds embark on a crucial two-match road swing in their quest to climb back into the playoff spots in the Eastern Conference.

On Saturday, the Hounds return to the site of their last playoff triumph, Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Ala., where they will face Birmingham Legion FC for the first time this year.

A missed opportunity to close out a win in last Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Colorado Springs left the Hounds five points back of the top eight, but Birmingham — the only team the Hounds play twice in their final nine matches — is only seven points clear of the Hounds in fifth place.

That puts additional importance on Saturday’s contest.

While the Hounds are unbeaten in their last seven matches — they need to pick up anywhere from four to six points on this road swing to stay within striking distance of the playoff line.

The Hounds’ last two trips to Protective Stadium have gone in the books as draws.

Robbie Mertz scored the tying goal to end the 2023 season opener 1-1, and Edward Kizza‘s two goals — one in regular time and one in extra time — brought the 2022 Eastern Conference Quarterfinal to a 2-2 finish before the Hounds advanced on penalty kicks.

Pittsburgh heads into this contest with a mostly healthy roster and no one showing up on the injury report.

A Closer Look: Birmingham Legion FC

The Legion have been in the USL Championship since 2018, and seemingly always are hovering around the 4th through 6th place spots in the standings, as a perennial postseason team.

Led by one of the few coaches in the USL Championship who is ever so slightly longer in the tooth but part of the same generation soccer players from 80s and early 1990s as Hounds’ Bob Lilley, Legion FC coach Tom Soehn, has been a fixture in US soccer circles for nearly four decades.

This season has been no exception to the Legion FC’s status in the Eastern Conference. They’re good, but still can pull ahead of Louisville, Tampa Bay and Charleston, currently sitting in fifth place after a tough 1-0 defeat at home to Detroit City FC last week.

Following that loss, Soehn did not sugarcoat things, saying immediately afterwards that it was his club’s worst outing of the season and that a tough video session and week of practice would follow.

As Legion FC now tries to turn the page and get back in the win column, Soehn liked the response that he saw in training the last few days, but he is now challenging his players to keep those same motivations when the lights are on and the home crowd is watching.

“You can see that they’ve been feistier, but all of that should’ve been there last Friday,” said Soehn. “As a staff, we’re still looking for answers, but we can’t turn the page backwards, we can look forward and don’t do that again, by rectifying the mistakes we made. It’s time to get going and make sure we’re ready for Pittsburgh.”

The roster has plenty of faces familiar to the Hounds. Stéfano Pinho leads Birmingham with six goals, while veteran playmaker Enzo Martinez and former Hounds winger Tyler Pasher each have four goals this season, and they’ve each been a nuisance to the Hounds through the years.  Pasher, you may recall, got his USL Championship career started in Pittsburgh, as part of one of the highest scoring Hounds’ teams ever, in 2015.

And still in goal, is the venerable Matt Van Oekel,

Here’s how Birmingham lined up last week vs Detroit (1-0 loss) 

Match-Ups to Watch and Hounds Projected XI

The Hounds finally got off the mat in terms of goal scoring, but last week it was defensive lapses in the late going that let them down in the wild, 2-2 draw vs Colorado Springs.

The Hounds started the previous match at Birmingham in a 4-2-3-1, which evolved at times into 5-3-1-1 (or 5-3-2). Their primary focus on the big field in Birmingham was to keep the ball, use the width and limit Birmingham’s potentially explosive attack.

With two matches remaining against Birmingham, it should be another tight, hard-fought contest, and most likely it could get very physical as has been the case when these clubs have met in recent years.

The concern here for the Hounds is that they’re a team that has been trying to play catch-up for most of the season, playing often in desperation, extending tons of energy in each match to stay on the front foot, and they’ve been susceptible a few times to costly letdowns on the defensive side.   That’s what happen against Colorado Springs.  It also happened in their last loss to Monterey Bay FC in early July.

Lilley and the players know that they have almost no room for error moving forward.  Getting this far into the season, with nine matches to go, there should be few surprises with the team’s lineup selections.

They will also be facing an equally desperate club looking for a bounce back result, so things should be pretty feisty on the pitch as these two teams have lots of veteran players

Projected Starting XI 

• GK – Eric Dick
• Winger/OB (L) – Junior Etou
• CB – Luke Biasi
• CB – Sean Suber
• CB – Pat Hogan
• Winger/OB (R) – Langston Blackstock
• CMF –  Jackson Walti
• CMF – Danny Griffin
• AMF – Robbie Mertz
• F – Edward Kizza
• F – Emmanuel Johnson

Bench options:

• GK – Gabe Perrotta, Jacob Randolph
• D – Illal Osumanu, Jake Kent-Loop, Pierre Cayet, Dani Rovira
• MF – Kenardo Forbes, Aiden O’Toole, Bradley Sample, Nate Dragasich
• F – Babacar Diene, Enoch Mushagalusa, Kazaiah Sterling

Match info

Riverhounds (6-9-10) vs. Birmingham Legion FC (10-9-5)

Date: Saturday, Aug. 24
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Protective Stadium, Birmingham, Ala.
Odds: Hounds +175 / Draw +220 / Birmingham +145
TV: KDKA+
Streaming: ESPN+
Live statistics: USL Championship Match Center
Live updates: @RiverhoundsSC on Twitter
Match hashtags: #BHMvPIT and #HOUNDTAHN