Cincinnati 3, Toronto FC 0
Q. Bob, you're on the road against the league leader, so obviously it was a tough task to start with, but it looked like your team made life difficult for itself with at least two of those goals.
BOB BRADLEY: Yes, that's true. Especially frustrating when I thought we had a pretty good start to the game. Had a pretty good rhythm. Had good control. Didn't create enough chances but over the first 20 to 25 minutes, I thought we had.
Played our way into the game in a good way. The corner, they got just in front of C.J. and obviously left the rebound and we didn't react fast enough. And then the second and third are really tough goals to give up as you're trying to push back into a game.
Q. You referenced it real quick there about the lack of chance creation. Maybe if you can just expand on that. Why was it so difficult for your team to get good looks on goal and create some quality scoring chances, do you think?
BOB BRADLEY: When you get up around the goal, there's all the different things that create chances. You know, we got a good ball across early, but the timing and the number of runners in the box wasn't good enough. We won a ball but didn't react fast enough to take advantage of an opportunity. When it's tight around the box. Some of our decisions about when to try to play a little pass or when to shoot, you know, there were some spaces to play through. I thought one example would be when Oso slipped a good ball to Fede and he was in, Celentano cut the angle and Fede couldn't do enough with it.
So I thought we got ourselves into areas around the box, and then late had some shots, but overall still not sharp enough in all the different things that you need to do to create chances.
Q. How did that first goal change the game tonight?
BOB BRADLEY: Yeah, I think we -- I mentioned that we started well and then when we found ourselves down 1-0, I think that mentally took something out of us. We spoke about that at halftime; that when you start well, if something goes against you, you can't let that turn the whole game upside down, and our ability once we went down to keep going, we spoke about it as I said at halftime and I thought we started the second half again in a better way but then immediately hurt ourselves with the second goal where we got caught with a bad pass from the back.
Q. Can you share an update on Raoul Petretta's status? Did he pick up a knock in that first half?
BOB BRADLEY: I don't have a complete update. I don't -- so I can't give a good answer, so I'll find out more later, but I'm sorry, I don't have an answer on that right now.
Q. I wonder if this sort of lack of chance creation today, does it give you pause for thought in terms of changing things up, whether it's maybe not going with three up top, maybe playing Lorenzo in and Fede more centrally, do you consider that possibility? Does there have to be change?
BOB BRADLEY: They got the ball an awful lot central lie tonight as well. So if you look through the whole game and see where they got the ball, I think they still got the ball both inside and outside in the first half in that early phase, Fede was coming inside quite a lot which is something that we worked on. So I wouldn't get caught up with the pure formation part. I think it's still what -- regardless of how you play, I think it comes down to then your ability in certain moments to execute, whether that's the dribble part to get by a guy or whether it's the right pass, whether now you get a touch and create yourself an opportunity for a good shot, so I don't think it's the formation.
Q. It seems like the fullbacks were taking up inside channels an awful lot. Was that about trying to get bodies for Fede on one side and Lorenzo on the other to play with a little bit, and is there an update on Kobe? It looks like he hurt his shoulder a little bit there.
BOB BRADLEY: Yes, Kobe fell on his shoulder and was able to continue for a while. I think he's had a shoulder issue in the past a couple seasons ago. So hopefully we can be on top of it. Sometimes that requires a brace when you get that type of fall.
You know, the spaces inside vary in terms of who moves into those spaces, the way they play, it gave us an opportunity at times for our fullbacks to move inside. That is especially important in moments when the wingers are wider so that now you've got some type of overload and trying angle on each side. We thought that was a way that we could attack them. I thought some of the buildups through those areas were good but as we discussed a few times, just didn't do enough with it.
Q. You've talked in the past about margins being very tight. Do you feel that you're still not very -- you're not that far out of the playoffs. Do you feel that if something goes your way, team scores first, or you don't make those mistakes, that a turnaround is not too far away?
BOB BRADLEY: Yeah, I think the fact that we show moments of good football every game is what we point to, but we've got to be able to sustain it and we've got to be able to eliminate some of those mistakes and we still have to do more in terms of scoring goals. The margin is tight for all those reasons.
DraftScripts by ASAP Sports.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports