Battery set for top of the table clash

The Battery welcome Louisville City FC to town Saturday, in what’s sure to be a mouth watering fixture. Lou City sit at the top of the Eastern Conference, three points off their closest competitors, NYRB II and the Battery themselves, who remain tied on points at 18, with NYRB having a +4 goal difference.

The visitors were one of the best teams to watch last year, and have carried on full steam ahead in this campaign, with only one loss in their first ten games, going 6-1-3 so far this year.

Jon Chandler Hoffman is Lou City’s primary goalscorer, and has 7 goals to his name out of the 17 LCFC have scored so far this year, and so the defense will surely have their hands full, as his tally has him 3rd in the goalscoring charts behind Jack McBean of LA Galaxy II and Kyle Greig of Vancouver

Like the Battery, Louisville have given significant time to both ‘keepers this year, Joseph Goodwin and Gregory Ranjitsingh. Ranjitsingh has kept more clean sheets than Goodwin, and given that this is a big game, the manager might go for the more reliable of the two.

The defense for Louisville has kept 4 clean sheets in its last four, with wins over Toronto and St. Louis, and draws against Richmond and Bethlehem Steel.

For the Black and Yellow, there’s more good news on the injury front, with Taylor Meuller and Obrien Woodbine, who missed the trip to Wilmington last week, trained all week this week, and look to be back part of the backline come 7:30 on Saturday.

Given this fact, Shawn Ferguson and Forrest Lasso, the latter of whom deputized for Meuller, did well to marshal the back line in a 1-0 win last week, with Ferguson capping off his performance with an excellent backheel on his way to earning USL Team Of The Week honors for the second time this year.

Like with that backline and Hoffman at the forefront of Lou City’s attack, the visitors will have to be more than wary of the Battery’s weapons. Romario Williams sits only one goal behind Hoffman in the USL scoring charts, and is always a goal threat. Add that to the form that players like Maikel Chang, Justin Portillo and Ricky Garbanzo have been in of late and you have yourself a very dangerous combination. Keep in mind also that no less than 10 players have scored this year for the Black and Yellow, and so, realistically, they are a threat from anywhere.

So, these two teams have come into this match on very similar runs of form, which makes for a very intriguing match. Kick off is at 7:30, and the match can be streamed at the USL Match Center.

TOP IMAGE: QUINTON GRIFFITH RUNS AT HIS MARKER IN THE BATTERY’S 2-0 WIN OVER TFC II. ROSS ALMERS PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO