Las Vegas vs Reno - Review and Highlights - A Decent Draw, I Guess

The first home game of the season. The first competitive home game ever. The first game of the newly inaugurated "Silver State Cup."

I was hoping for more than just a 1-1 draw, to be honest. But I suppose it's better than a loss, so we can't be too disappointed about it.

Both teams switched formation on us. Reno, instead of going with their 4-4-2, pulled a man back into midfield:

While the Lights, who normally do use a 4-3-3, added a man to the backline to go with a 3-4-3 formation, possibly to try to shore up the defense a little:

The Lights jumped out to a relatively early lead. We won a corner in front of the home fans, whipped a ball in, it was half-cleared by Reno and popped out to our midfielder Alex Mendoza, who lashed home a low drive into the bottom right.

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Unfortunately, Reno equalized a minute later, through the former UNLV player Musovski. It was a bit of a crap goal, to be honest. Some Reno bloke took a potshot from about 25 yards, and Ferrino parried it right into the path of Musovski who tucked it home. 

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The blame can't all lie on the goalkeeper there. For example, you want your defenders to follow the runners in, and it wasn't a super easy save to make in the first place. But at the same time, if I were a defender, I would want my keeper to parry that to the side, rather than back out in front of goal.

The first half ended at 1-1. The second half didn't see any goals, but there were a fair few chances for each team. The Lights probably had the better chances, and would have been a bit more disappointed that they didn't manage to score - especially after Musovski got sent off for a second yellow with about 20 minutes of play left.

As far as the fairness of the second yellow - let's just say that the Lights got a bit of home field advantage there. I didn't even see much of a foul, much less a yellow, much much less a second yellow.

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So a decent result, but one that does leave a bit of a bitter taste in the mouth. At home, against the rivals, getting the lead early, you want to hold onto it. And when they have a man sent off, you really have to punish them more than we did. After the red card, we really should have upped the tempo a bit, pass around them a bit more, and I just didn't see as much as I had hoped. 

But overall, we are still an expansion side, and we didn't lose, so I guess job done. If you would have offered me 4 points from the first two games I probably would have taken it no questions asked.

Oh, and the attendance for the night was just over 9,000. A good showing, if you ask me. That number will definitely go down over the course of the season, since not every game will be a rivalry, and this was the home opener. But if it stays in the ballpark, I think we will call it a success.