St. Louis 0, Portland 0
BRADLEY CARNELL: Good evening, everybody. Yeah, I thought the energy was amazing tonight. It felt very festive. A lot of energy. A lot of urgency from the fans, and I thought we created enough moments to reward ourselves. Unfortunately that didn't go our way.
So yeah, we get our fifth clean sheet of the season, and yeah, I think that's a positive. You know, we'll look back long and hard at the tape and the film and see how we could have created a little bit more clarity, a little bit more, yeah, clearer shooting chances maybe. But yeah, for the most part, this is a game that gets away from us.
But overall, very happy with the application, the effort, the urgency. I can't fault the boys for that. Yeah, we move on.
Q. How frustrating, maddening, whatever, are these results? Because you're saying you need wins, and Portland is the kind of team you've got to get a win against.
BRADLEY CARNELL: Sure. Listen, I don't know if you have to win against Portland. They are unbeaten in their last four. There's no have-tos any more in this league. For sure we want to win our home games. That's very important.
But yeah, make no sort of bones about it. They are a good team. You can see their star power up front: Evander, Moreno, Rodriguez, Mora comes in, Nathan. There's a good strength of attackers there. And if we didn't have our defensive structure in place, they could have hurt us.
On the one side these type of games, especially against Portland last year, we lose these ones.
I still see us, yeah, without sugarcoating everything, still see us as a group taking steps forward. Yeah. We are looking positively right now, you know, because I see so many good things, and I'm expecting things to turn 100 percent.
Q. Is it hard to stay positive? You guys haven't won a game since, like, May 11?
BRADLEY CARNELL: No. And clichéd as it is, I believe in this process, and I see many good things. Yeah, just sometimes, is it the final pass? Is it the run? Is it the quality of the shot? Is it, you know, do we find the advantage, who is free, who is open, who takes that shot?
And then against good teams, you're going to give up one or two moments. Yeah, I'm glad they didn't take theirs. There weren't too many of them. But still, we dominate shots. We dominate XG. We dominate corners. We dominate everything, just about, I suppose, and we still go empty-handed. But the positive is the clean sheet.
Q. Did you see some moments tonight where you got a turnover in the attacking third, and maybe would look for your guys to look to shoots a little sooner? Did you see anything like that?
BRADLEY CARNELL: I'm not sure if it's sooner. I just want guys to see a clear picture. When we win the ball as we did a few times in the first half, up high, they tried to play through, we jumped them. And then can we connect that first one? Can we play out of the pressure? Can we advance the ball? Can we create overloads with the moment off the ball? Can we make runs in behind?
So you know, I thought, yeah, for the most part, yeah, we created these moments. Just couldn't capitalize. Yeah.
Q. Can you comment on any stand-out individual performance that caught your eye today?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I mean, we don't usually speak about the individuals here. We speak about a collective effort.
But I did see some guys today really, Célio Pompeu doing a great job down the left-hand side. Hosei Kijima with a lot of energy; so he gets a lot of praise from his teammates and obviously we see what he does.
Overall, Totland never stops running. Some really good moments from a lot of the guys. Yeah, it would be tough to single out anyone specific.
Q. Can you elaborate on any specific strategies or tactics that were particularly effective or ineffective?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I thought some of our second balls, we lost, they are a very direct them. They are primed for second balls. We are, too. I thought we were a little bit too stretched in our buildup phase.
So with the aerial duels, we didn't do that well on and we lose the second ball. Yeah, we could have tried to get some more clarity, like I said, in the buildup phase. But yeah, probably the one I'm going to go to bed tonight thinking about is the second ball duels.
Q. I wanted to ask you, it looked like you and Thomas Totland had just thoughts on getting the ball to him quicker on that side as you tried to switch the play. What was the difficulty of getting him open down the right-side tonight?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I think we found him a few times. We spoke about space at the top of the box. We spoke about low and hard.
Yeah, just trying to find the optimal space. Because if you go too high, their broad (ph) is jumping; if you go too shallow, their winger is jumping you. Just trying to find that optimal space. We couldn't find as much clarity as we have done so much in the last couple of weeks.
Q. There were a lot of scary moments today. Credit to Roman Bürki for the good saves. If you look in the last five games, you've conceded ten goals. Are you worried about your defensive strategy or defensive approach to every game?
BRADLEY CARNELL: It's a decent question. I saw many more scary moments the other way. Ball saved on the goal line. Ball hitting the pole. So I saw many more scary moments the other side.
We concede I think the least shots in the League. So yeah, thinking about defensive structure, yes, we can do better and we aim to do better. We're conceding, like you said, we got a clean sheet and that's a step in the right direction.
Q. Nilsson came off in the 50th minute. Can you elaborate or comment on his injury and any specifics or how the seriousness of it yet?
BRADLEY CARNELL: We're always a little cautious with Joakim and his knees. We have to monitor these things when he goes down. He was on a yellow card already, and for that five-minute period that we were observing, I didn't see any clarity in his running. It looked like he was struggling.
Speaking to him afterwards, he's a little frustrated because he thought he could have gone on longer. But yeah, we just had to feel in that moment, what does the game need, and we made that call.
Q. On his frustration, when he showed, when he was coming off the pitch, even though it might be a little clash is that something you like to see from your players, the urgency to keep playing?
BRADLEY CARNELL: I love it. I love emotion. I'm emotionally wired as well. I love the game. I want to win the game. I'm extremely competitive and so it's totally normal. And there was no clash.
Q. Hosei Kijima made his first start. What were some things you saw tonight from him that stood out for you?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, just relentless in his moments, in his running, in his ball progression, and he's really feisty against the ball. We saw a lot of positive moments from Jose.
Q. Edu puts one off the post, and then Tim gets a shot, blocked by a guy who had his back turned to him. When you see things like that, are you thinking you're under a dark cloud?
BRADLEY CARNELL: No. I mean, these are moments we should thrive on, right. So we have some brilliant moments. We have some moments where we have to learn, and yeah, the last couple of months have been brilliant.
Now we have to adapt and learn. But they are not by means dire. I see a good team playing some good soccer, giving opponent a damn tough game, and that's what we pride about, right.
I said I've seen growth as a team. I've seen growth in our style of play, in our game model.
So yeah, I see a lot of good things, and again, you know, I hate to say it, but yeah, this is the process that we're in right now. If it was that easy, you know, and we could all be on top of life and on top of our world and our occupation or jobs, then everyone would be doing it.
Yeah, actually, this is a phase we have to embrace and enjoy because the only way to get forward and move forward is to embrace these things and challenge yourself to do a little bit more and tighten the screw and everybody is doing just about enough. So yeah, we are embracing this moment.
Q. Were there chances that almost didn't happened? Seemed like a lot of long balls you either didn't catch up with or Portland --
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, it's the type of game that they put you in, right. They are one of the most direct teams in the league.
So yeah, we got caught in that a little bit and then they caught a little bit of rhythm from their second ball process.
Yeah, we'll look at that but we are not going to overevaluate that.
Q. What were the final possession numbers?
BRADLEY CARNELL: 52, I think. I think that's majority, right.
Q. Which you don't do very often.
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, we don't value possession that much. But yeah, we don't really take too much stock into that.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports