New York City FC Head Coach Pascal Jansen is hopeful his side has learned key lessons from the first half of the season as they prepare for a run of four consecutive road games.
Jansen's side recorded an important 3-1 win over Toronto FC last time out and will now begin a four-game road stretch, starting with a trip to Bank of America Stadium this weekend to take on Charlotte FC.
"Yeah, that's the interesting question," Jansen said, when asked how his side can secure back-to-back wins. "That's what I have been talking about with my boys as well,” Jansen said. “I said to one of your colleagues just now in another interview that I hope we are at that point that we have learned our lessons throughout the first part of the season, first half that goes for the away games as well.
“The game that comes to mind is the one away against Atlanta, where we had 60 minutes of good play, but we still lost that game. And that is, in a nutshell, the story of our away games in general. Because the majority we've controlled those games, apart from a few, got close to a good result, but didn't get the result that we were looking for at the end. And those things have been reviewed, discussed, and hopefully will do better in the second part of the season.”
Saturday's match marks the first of four straight road games for NYCFC, a run Jansen views as a major opportunity to improve upon the team's form away from the Five Boroughs.
"It's a big, massive opportunity to do better when we've done so far with our away games,” he said. “As I mentioned to your colleagues now, we've been close to good results on the away games until now, but not close enough so we didn't get the results that we needed to get in the away games, and that is still one of our targets to do better in away games.
“And like I mentioned to your colleagues just now, having learned the lessons from the first part of the season, the first half of the season is something that we have to take with us into the second part of the season.”
As part of that travel itinerary the team will rack up the air miles. Also wrestling challenging weather conditions, the Dutchman discussed the work being done behind the scenes to prepare the squad for the physical demands that lie ahead.
"That's the major part of the adjusting ourselves and making sure that we're ready for the stretch away, especially in the circumstances that you described just now,” he said. “So the human performance team has done everything within their power to make sure that everything in the program, in and around the pitch has been adjusted in order to deal with the heat and the humid circumstances that we're going to experience.
“But the good thing is, though, that we're going to play an opponent every time that has to deal with the same issues. So for us, it's major, it's the majority of our approach is about making sure that our away stretch is better on pitch in game management perspective than we've done in the first part of the season.”
Jansen also referenced the team’s defensive foundation as a building block for success, while also praising the commitment of the entire squad.
"Defensively we're doing pretty decent, keeping the numbers low in conceding and the XG against,” he said. “But that is something that we also work on a lot during our training sessions to make sure that we do this as a team.
“You see the amount of work that everybody puts into the game, from the attack to the defense, it is tremendous. So that is the key factor in this whole story. If you want to be successful as a team, you have to defend as a team. And throughout this process, you also see that the offensive side, going forward and creating chances and scoring the goals, is in an upward trend as well. So we hope to continue this trend.”
As for what specific growth he wants to see in the coming matches, Jansen returned once again to the lessons of Atlanta, and the value of learning how to close games out away from home.
“Well, from a game management perspective, it's very interesting again. The game against Atlanta tells a lot of that story,” he said. “If you if you go up three one in an away game like that, you should be controlling the game till the end.
“But like in a few other games, we gave the opportunity for the opponent to get a bigger piece than they had all along. Going to that moment. Those are moments that we think we recognize better now and execute better in the following games. Is something that we're looking for.”
