Defensive Fortitude, Holding the Line, Southern Derby Silverware: 4 points out of 6

The depth in the midfield a little.

Different with world trap underneath. Discussing the Charleston Battery, your host Granite will be joined by other defenders of the fleet from the black and yellow supporters section and together they will help fortify and conquer. They are the cannons just a bit. And that allows Landry to come all.

The way back across. Welcome to the Candy Crew podcast. I am Grant. I am joined by our ever favorite, Ryan. Ryan, how are you?

I'm doing good, Grant, how are you?

I'm doing all right. So we have a lot of territory to cover. Big matches. Southern Darby. Another big match that you don't know about, but I know about. Relegated United versus the Bosch ballers YMCA league up in Somerville. Do an outstanding job. We're up 2n older group of us versus the young people from Bosch and last 5 minutes end up 2 2. But anyways, we had a draw, so we're happy about that. Had a beer, celebrated. And if you ask me, our keeper is killer. You know Jonathan?

Oh, yes.

Did you ever meet Jonathan?

Yes.

Yeah, so he got an assist. He did a great ball down just right inside the 3 3rd line and. And right to Chad. And all of you don't know Chad. Chad's pretty good baller himself. Chipped it up over the keeper to himself and right about the net.

Classic.

So our. Yeah, so our keeper has just the same amount of assists as anybody else on the team with one. We've only played one game.

Just let me know. Just let me know when Cheers scores from the third line.

Oh, you can't. Oh, yeah. Oh, we'll try. Oh, now that was.

It was. The one I got was pure luck. It would never happen again.

No, it would happen. It would happen with these guys because they got scared. They started pressing this and really needed a keeper to step up to the third line and put it back in the net. Back for them. So last week, wife and I went down, did some scouting down in the great city of Savannah, Georgia. There's some great places down there. We kind of stayed off river street and or Bay street where it's called. And we spent a lot of time back in the neighborhoods. Had a blast. A lot of nice little pubs go out a little bit further out past Forsyth park, it's called Starling, I do believe. And it was just kind of a up and coming kind of vibe to a bunch of hippies and breweries. And it was. We had a good time. We really did parked car, did mostly walking except for a little ferry tour up and down the river. Got to go into a pub where the Arsenal people hang out and that pub sucks and the people in there suck and I won't mention McColla's name because the whole bar sucks. Do not go in there. But anyways, there's other ones that are more promising. I thought I was about to fight my way about and you know, you're an Arsenal. I like to fight. But yeah, I. It wasn't the Arsenal people. There's no Arsenal people. I did meet somebody we might bring on. He coached a lot of. For years, 30, 40 years American football for different colleges, like Methodist out of. Out of Fville, North Carolina, stuff like that. So I had a great conversation with him just talking about coaching.

Just.

He's always an assistant coach and moved around and so it's kind of neat to hear similarities between coaches because there's some similarities between, you know, just motivating people and, and trying to get the best out of them. That's pretty cool. And I. So I have his number. We might try to get him on to talk coaching one day. Just, you know, see the similarities, talk about it and see what he, what he thinks about things. So come back from question.

Yeah, if I can make it.

Yeah. I mean he made a whole career out of being an assistant coach across a bunch of different colleges. I thought that's cool. Better than what I'm doing, I guess. Well, no, if you're. If my boss is listening though. I love what I do, John. I love it. Anyways, so had a good time down there. The problem was, was trying not to have a good time and watch matches. So I got, watched a little of the matches, did a lot of, little research. Kind of fun. It's not fun when you see that we had two clean sheets and great job for us. But I didn't get to watch both the matches the whole time. So first we already talked about the Great relegated United versus the Bosch Ballers. They were, they were like 25 to 30 years old. And Ryan, you know that our average age in our team is a little bit above that.

Yeah.

Even though we're bringing in some younger guns. We're bringing. Well, what you haven't seen is younger guns we brought in like. Well, anyways, so let's talk about Birmingham. Yep.

Birmingham nil.

Nil.

Birmingham 00 game. Definitely felt at times it was clearly one sided. If you look at the stat sheet, you know you'd see 60% possession towards the Battery. You'll see the Battery dominated all corner kicks with six shot attempts, almost double compared to Birmingham, yet just couldn't break through. And again, it's one of those games where I felt like going into it, we had the firepower and the means to want to bury the ball. And again, going away on the road, didn't see it. It just didn't. It just didn't connect. It didn't happen. The away crowd, usually we are a pretty good team on the road. We had been for the past year and a half. Last season was a little different. This year we've been pretty good on the road. Not the result I was wanting that a lot of the people weren't wanting. But it's still. At the end of the day, we didn't drop all three points. You know, still got the draw. We still got the clean sheet. We did our job in the defense. It's just up front, just didn't find the net. I mean that's. That's clear as day is what it was. It's just.

But I think it's. It's huge that we got a clean sheet because we've been struggling.

We have been struggling. That was a huge thing. I mean, all year I haven't bought a clean sheet. And now we just followed it up. Two back to back.

Clean sheets back to back. So now our back two backs or two center backs was Joey and Mr. Smith. Right. Both those matches. I don't know what happened to Leland, but it seems like that parry might be a good one.

Yeah, that was. I like. Joey solidified himself into the starting lineup as a key center back, playing as many minutes as he can, wanting to be there, wanting to throw body and do everything for team. And I think that he has solidified himself as a massive, massive leader in that back line. And now you're at the difficulty of. As we talked about with Graham Smith coming back, Leland coming back, Edwards. And I think Edwards may be out for one more week, I believe. But with him now coming back. So you have three center backs fighting for one spot now if you. Joey has already solidified the other one. Right. And we had talked about this a little bit last week. I think for the time being, Graham and Joey's connection seemed to just not like they had missed a beat. It's like those loss. It's like those best friends that. Best friends through high school and then they went off to college in separate parts of the nation, parts of the US after 15 years, get back together, have a beer and nothing was missed like the friendship. It's right on the same page.

So Joey and Edwards step right in next to each other and did A fantastic job. Do you think it's just Joey's the one that could. This is, you know, flexible. It can work with anybody.

Well, I mean, you look at how he played and that's a great question because he, you look at how he plays with Graham and Ben Edwards, not much difference. He loves the enjoyment of playing. I think Edwards, he. It's not just Edwards either, because I want to say he. Every time he's playing, he has a smile on his face like with Edwards. But it's like, oh, he does. I mean, he always has a smile on his face when he's playing. He's just so happy to be out there. And I think that no matter who's next to him, he's not going to let that hamper or over confident him give him too much confidence. He's going to still play his way and enjoy being out there on the field. I think that's what makes him much more dangerous.

And Joey's a great example for being at the right place, right time and working your ass off. And so that way you're available and when it's time for you to step up, you step up and all of a sudden you're showcasing yourself. And it's going to be hard to replace him right now because he's playing well with no matter who's beside him on that pairing. And I think it's a great example of just work hard, have a great attitude and put yourself in the right position.

Exactly, exactly. And you know, this kind of skipping ahead to the North Carolina game. But if you just look at both starting lineups, you know, we kept the same back line across both clean sheets. And one name that sticks out across both back line sheets to me though was Blackstock. Outside.

Exactly.

That one just stuck out to me. It's like, I look at this, I'm looking at the spread or the, you.

Know, team of the week. Right.

And high school team of the week. Yeah. And I think.

Yeah. And I've been talking, I, I have been worried about Blackstock because I don't think he's been performing up to what his potential was. And in the last two weeks he has come in and I think he was. Now he's playing the level that he should be and that's what's also helping out with these clean sheets. Well, you think there's still more.

I feel like he's still not there yet. Like he's, he's getting his confidence. I saw the highlights of when he cut inside the top, the box. He went for the shot. Love that he's taking a shot. Love that he's putting in crosses into the box. Love that he's actually not afraid to take the man on and hit the byline and try to whip it in, get the corner kick. He is starting. As the minutes went on, the minutes went on, he was getting more confident. But even when he took that shot I felt like he wasn't fully confident in himself to take the shot. And when he does get confident enough to take the shot when he wants to, that's when we're going to see the true black belt.

Well, yeah, let's look at Nate because Nate, when he started out last year, I don't want to say he was timid but he wasn't as free flowing as he is now because he has a little more license to go forward to take those shots. And so you know, maybe as he, as he gets more everybody begins to, I don't say that don't trust him but trust him more and he feels more have that license to move forward and take some shots then I think we're going to see.

No, that's a great shot that you actually just mentioned Desantis because in my like remembering it last year, Desantis, he had a good, it's not that he didn't do for anything in the first half of the year, it's just the second half like September, October when the playoffs came in and that's where he made a name for himself. Like that's where he truly solidified himself with his assists, his final third attack, his work great getting back and making those key plays where it kept attacking team at midfield instead of them being in our final third. Those types of key plays allowed him to have the freedom this year and he has more confidence and stuff and I feel like Blackstock can definitely be at Dos Santos but on that right hand side now. And so that's why I think Blackstock is truly going to make a name for himself later in the year. You know he's going to start having bright spots but later in the seat, later in the season I think that's where he's going to truly, truly shine and make his name for himself. I go Santos the last year.

I hope so.

I did see that's what I'm hoping for.

Sagbers. Yeah, Sabers isn't, isn't stepping up. I don't know if he just lost a little bit of step, I don't know but I'm glad we had Blackstock come in and now he's starting to show his worth because obviously Pyramid's not going to bring somebody in that he doesn't think is not going to show out well. And so sometimes it takes players a little time we've talked about in the past to get used. I don't want to say used to the system, but get used to the other players, the pitch, the unforgiving humidity, everything. So maybe, maybe now he's getting in his groove because he's played one away.

And you know, you mentioned Cyprus and Cygbers did get in both games, but as a sub and as a late sub too. For the Birmingham game he came in for Graham Smith and then in the North Carolina game he went in for Juan David Torres up in the right wing spot, but obviously he dropped more to a center midi outside wing or spot. So.

So our back four have been the same across both. Both games, right?

Both games. And I now we're. I like it.

Yeah, I like. Because they all. I don't.

The reason why I like it so much is because it gives us clarity of is this going to be our best team, our best back as one of our options, right. Because we have so many different combinations that we have. Right. But to show consistency across at least a few games to where we're now able to keep two clean sheets, we're able to at least get one win. We're now able to see, okay, this, this back four is a good back four defensively. Now, how can we help with the attack going forward now that we have to? Maybe if we move one of these outside backs or move a center back and change it out, maybe that then helps the attack. You know, maybe that may be the mentality going after that or changing out a midfielder. That allows you to answer those questions though, earlier or midway through the season rather than a bit later in the season when you're trying to figure out stuff for the playoff play. So I love seeing us continue to mix it up and then also show a little bit of consistency here through a few of the games so we can see how they were truly gelling together because it's hard to make those connections, especially when you're making play a push because you have that just tense pressure on top of everything else.

Now let's talk about the midfield because there was a little bit changes between the two. Two matches, right? I think with Birmingham, Malloy didn't start and Jennings did and I know he's a forward, but then on Birmingham, I mean North Carolina, Malloy did start and I think Jennings didn't If I remember correctly.

Yeah, Jennings didn't. Jennings didn't start in the North Carolina game. That was the difference but mainly the difference between the two. As you had MD sitting in as the, as the, as the cam and in the North Carolina game you had a causal backup in his cam roll and he gets his goal. I mean, what are you waiting for? We've been waiting for Ikaza to get back up in that role. That is to me I wouldn't move him from cam. He is a great, great cam because he can win you that athletic ball in the attacking third. He's going to keep the pressure. He's going to invite the pressure and keep it in the final third rather than keeping him back. He's going to play defensively but allow his teammates to drop back. You have Malloy, we have Landry who can go out and make those lunging tackles who aren't afraid to go out whereas the causes just a tiny bit smaller. I think they're midfield in the North Carolina game, you know, I think they did.

Well. They found the space. Kaza found the space. Right. Emilio found that spot where nobody else was and they had like probably six guys in the box defensive and he found that spot and. And who was it that got the assist on that one?

Yeah.

It was a beautiful. It wasn't even across. It was a pass on the ground and he just. I don't say he redirected it because it was. He. You put it in where it needed to go. But just finding that's what ecause is great at is finding that space up close right within that around the 18 yard mark and being able to find that space in there to. To put some hurting on people. In the past we've been trying to put them back playing more of an Aaron Malloy position or back in that defensive midfield. And you're right, just push him forward because he was almost playing a forward as high up as he was playing.

Now I was looking at, I'm looking at the sheet and it's like I can now see. I can 100% see Pierman going in the way. All he would move like if he were to take Arturo all the field or take momoi off the field for a game, allow Landry to be the sole six take Cal Jennings, slide him up top with Myers and then you would then have a 4, 1, 3, 2 and I can see him pushing that for 15, 20 minutes if we need to go get a goal like that's going to be his, his push because then you're inviting six guys always in the final third for us.

Yeah, it. That's not the way he operates that.

No, it's not the way he operates. But that's like. That's the tools he has when he has a player like Kyle Jennings on his bench and you. You have that firepower to do so. Like, it's. That's what teams now have to adjust for because other teams are. If I was planning in Pierman that 100% what's going through my mind, like you have Cal Jennings on your bench. Let me have tried to reassess because if you just throw him on and then you're going to a cop, that changes my whole defensive style. And I'm just gonna pray off of a. Pray off a counter off the corner kick. I mean, that's literally the Battery's weaknesses right now is their counter on the corner kick.

Well, we last two matches, we've done pretty, pretty well. We haven't really been threatened that much, but we've had been able to push up and felt pretty rock solid at the back. So I didn't. I haven't felt as uneasy about that counter as I have in the past.

Right. And the counter goes. The counter goes before last week. Right. Because the last two games you saw that this back four changed that.

Yep. And so now we got to fix. We're back to where we're not scored goals.

Yeah.

And we got to fix that. And we've got two very talented forwards. We've got some wingers that are fantastic. We got Emilio coming up there in that tacking kind of center cam roll. But we're still not putting the numbers in we need to. And I don't know how to. How to fix that. I don't know what the problem is. And obviously Ben doesn't either because if he did, we'd fix it.

But I think you just. I think to fix it, you rotate the wingers more. I see that.

Explain like, explain rotating the wingers more.

Of like instead of Arturo starting every time or one, you have to have one starting. You have MD or Cal up top and then you have the other one out wide for Arturo. And then maybe Arturo slides in the cam one game and then I cause those slides in the next game. You know, trying that different combination up front. You have seven guy. I believe it's seven. We have seven guys who can fit in five spots. So it's just trying to figure out which one of those is the best combination. Now we have eight guys because now you're adding In Jeremy Kelly, who then got in the last game, too.

Yeah, let's. Let's. Let's talk about him.

That's a big. That's a big player to. To talk about too, especially on core kicks. I mean, the presence that this man brings. Oh, crap.

So what's his. What's his. Yeah, what's his. What's his best position?

For me, Kelly can easily be the solid six or the cam. But I think he's a true eight. I think.

But we have a true eight.

I think he's a true eight in the way of he. His frame and the way he turns with the ball, how he holds it tight to his body. Like when we're receiving it. He. He's used to making it on a half turn and then distributing it out real quick. And I think you. But we already have a facilitator, though.

Is. Is Kelly just every time he subs on, we're subbing him on for a like player. Is it just fresh legs going out there versus a different, you know, tool set tools that we can put out there to do something a little bit different?

Well, same like last, like the game he went in for. He went in for Arturo playing out wide on the left. Wasn't a big fan of that. And I believe that was. That was late in the game too. Was a little. Believe that was.

Yeah, it's like. I think both times he come in is like 60 minutes.

Yeah, it was the 60th minute. And he's up front kind of running and it's. I think he's just. It's not that he's lost out there. That's not his position. You want to get this guy. He's a type of player you want to get involved because of his distribution going out and his threatening IQ focus, his peripheral vision of being able to know. I know this guy's going to be. I know Arturo will be running over my left shoulder. All I have to do is swing in that way. Some of the videos of him doing it in Scottishly or Spanishly in. In England.

I thought I. I thought you said astonishingly astonishing. I was like, yeah, I'll go with that. But you said Scottishly. Yeah, yeah. You're thinking about Robbie. Robbie the great Scottish legend, anyways.

The one and only.

The one and only Robbie Crawford. So that. Yeah, that's what he brings in. That size is. He's the size that we need in that kind of eight roll. Yeah, because you mentioned. I think he's a good eight.

Everything.

Every time do we give up something because Emilio is not the biggest physical presence. And is Kelly there to fill that gap?

No, they don't. They need to play together. Who's. So.

But who do you take off then?

Okay. If I had my. If I. If I were to do the lineup, I would have Cal or Myers up top. Right. Just one of the strikers. One of them up top. It's. You can go like for like. Doesn't matter which one. 1. David Torres out on the right. I Casa a cam. And then I would have Landry out on the left. But sliding in as a man.

Landry. We. We gotta talk about him a little bit too, in a second.

Because, man, I don't know. Just. It gets hard because you have so many options in the middle. Like, I was fighting Landry to keep Landry as a six, then you'd want to keep Malloy as a six. And then you put Kelly as an eight. And then you have. And then. Then you're at five midfielders. Doesn't really work. We need to get two in the back.

Yeah. L. Lry is just killing it. He's just. He's good for a yellow card every once in a while. And I was it. You get five and whatever it is. And to sit out for a little bit in your timeout. Your naughty chair. But I think I. He is so. He's so good at just cleaning up the ball and transitioning in that linking play.

Well, he's got eight yellow cards.

Why does he have so many.

Yeah, he's gotten eight yellow cards. He's gotten two in the last. He got two last week alone. He's gotten one. He's gotten one in the last three games. He's got three in the last week.

Maybe that's. Maybe that's the reason why we're keeping clean sheets, because he's doing some professional fouling there.

He was in a row of a yellow card with two clean sheets. I'll take it.

Yeah. Well, now. Now we're kind of beefing up our midfield. Right. So we're having some options. So be able to rotate people. I think that's the cool thing because Malloy played a lot last year. I don't think he rarely got a break unless he was injured or. Or something like that. So now look, we're rotating.

Yeah. That's where we had to look for somebody because Malloy was out for the beginning of the year.

Yep. And I. So I like Kelly. I haven't seen him play in person yet. So I'm really excited to just see his Imposingness as he puts down other players.

And.

You'Re right, we have a lot of choices and that's a good thing. Now we got to just work on getting balls to the back of the net. And I'm glad Emilio did score. And because it's not just a forward scoring, it's somebody even though he was playing up forward. But it shows that we. We can score from anywhere. We just gotta keep that up.

Yep.

And speaking of yellow cards, I'm gonna throw that at the referee next time. Probably shouldn't throw objects on the pitch. I do not condone throwing objects on the pitch. I might show it to them though. So let's talk about our non scoring. So what was it just. Are we just kind of cold right now? It's just. We're going through like anything you go through ups and downs.

Going through our ups and downs.

Do you think it.

I think. I think we're just missing the warrant desire. I think this next game. Yes.

We're going on the road.

It's a further road game. We're taking a flight. This game holds meaning. This game holds a lot of meaning because last year it set our pace off really well by beating this team 40 to start the year. But now we have one of their key midfielders as our midfielder and he wants to make a statement of. This is the reason why I left. I wonder when.

Yeah, so. So they're top the. The Western Conference, right?

Yes.

So we're going up against them now. Here's some. Here's a fun fact because I thought this is kind of interesting because last Saturday there was. Or last Sunday it was massive rain. I won't call it rain. I think the humidity got to like 110% and it just started falling out of the sky. Pitch looked like. I don't understand why that is a problem. Why we can't fix that either. But the cool. Here's the cool thing. So I've pulled up, you know how like stats, right. So I pulled up some really important stats about Albuquerque, New Mexico and the weather. So I went to Intellicast, like next Saturday starting at 5pm Their time. Humidity is supposed to be like 21%. It's supposed to rise up drastically by 10pm Their time to 37%.

The games at 9pm yeah.

Is that 9pm Their time or our time? So their temperature at. Yeah, 5:00pm is gonna be 6 or 7 their time. So I did. Yeah, I got confused because you know how when you look at temperatures and what it feels like versus temperature here in South Carolina, there's usually about a 10 degree to 20 degree difference between the temperature, what it actually is, and what it feels like. Well there it's like the temperature is 80 degrees, feels like 80 degrees because the humidity is so low. So I was like all confused there for a little minute. I was like, where are they? But, but yeah. So how's our, do we need to take some extra lotion to make sure we don't dry out out there? Is that going to be helpful to us? Is our, is our, you know, high humidity training going to be able to handle that dry heat that they have in New Mexico?

I think Pierman knew one of the reasons why he went after Landry and that's one of those things, is to help better us prepare for the West Coast. It's not like Pierman hasn't been there before himself. I mean, he's been there, he's been around. I mean, pretty sure he's played and coached in every single stadium in the USL by now. But having a player experience of having him play there, being part of that team, part of that culture, knowing a lot of just like the little things that you do over time, you don't realize what you do until game day and labor is going to pick up on, oh, this is what they'll do. This, this, this, this, this. And just picking up on small habits and allowing your team to also mimic and do the same thing. Going into a game is going to give you the same, same competition level. That's what it's about. It's evening it out. Not us getting an advantage over them or them having it over us. It's just about us leveling it because we're already on road and on a disadvantage.

We've got to be able to beat teams on the road out there, you know, or at least draw with them. But we've got to guess who we're losing to at the final stages of the, of the season is some west coast teams that seem to come in and be able to suck our points.

You look at how we've played so far, we haven't really played any west coast teams. And at the end of our season we only play two, two or three East coast teams. We played three East coast teams in the last two months. We just have three East coast games in the. I think it's like five or eight are West Coast. So it's like out of 11 games, I'm crazy.

Yeah. Okay, what else you have?

We have our next game.

What's your prediction?

We have Our next game next year.

Yeah. Yeah. Which. What's your prediction on that?

I think it's going to be crazy. New Mexico is Ford. They are. Yes. They're in first place, but they're also 10 point behind us. Yeah. Battery put up 35 points. Think we find in that. I'm going with. I'm. I'm going with a total one. New Mexico losing at home to the Battery. With Landry scoring in the game, he either is going to put us early and put us in the score sheet or he's going to have the game winning. I don't know which one it's going to be, but it's going to be one of the two. And either one of them is going to be a massive imprint on the game.

Okay, I'll go with that. Still gonna go 2 nil. And. And Juan David, he's. He's due. He is due. He is put. He is ready to score a goal. And the second goal. I'm gonna go with it. Yeah, he's do. He hasn't scored in a while.

Like it.

I'm ready for a rocket. Let's do. Let's do. Let's do laundry. And Juan.

I like it.

Yeah. A goal each.

There we go.

Now in my head I'm like, did we let one leak through? No. Because I think we're starting our back four. I have utmost confidence and faith in the back four we have right now. And we're just going to take it. They're not letting anything through, man.

We have three in a row. We have three in a row. Hats off to that. And that's an incredible achievement so far this year.

It is. You said it's a big trip. I mean, it's a couple hours flight. You're there. And it's. Even though it should be nicer, but it's still a change of conditions on the body with, with the drier heat.

And, and probably there for a short time.

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how. Albuquerque is pretty high in altitude, if I remember right. I can't remember. I. I think it's up a little bit. So we're even dealing with that. So there's a whole lot of different stressors that, that our guys have to deal with. So at least they don't have to sweat all the way through it. They can not sweat. Okay. That's all I've got. I think that you said the matches. Kickoff's 9 o' clock on Saturday. Our time here on the east coast. We'll shoot out to our socials. If we're gonna go round up somewhere other than our normal couch potato positions and maybe we should. We should find someplace. Maybe we do some kind of live thing or something like that. Be kind of fun.

I like that.

And I had something else. Another big announcement, and I don't know what it is. I really don't. It wasn't that big, actually. I was just joking with it. That's all I got.

Oh, no. Watch party for the next two games as they're both West Coast 9pm late games.

So should we have a cannon crew watch party?

We'll be in the bed with the dogs and the baby watching the game.

A bunch of peeping Toms outside your window going, hey, watch party. Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll. We'll catch up with y' all after the match on Saturday. Up the battery up the battery.

We.

Are the fleet yes, if we will sink but we, we are the battle ra.