LAS VEGAS — Phoenix Rising came back from an early deficit to draw 1-1 against Las Vegas Lights.

The draw makes it three unbeaten for Phoenix, with forwards Kelvin Arase and Ihsan Sacko added to the list of unavailable players for this tie. However, Rising still sits below the playoff line, having won just two of their last ten in all competitions.

Absences mount again for Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising had been steadily making its way out of an injury crisis, but availability once again plagued Rising’s efforts in Las Vegas.

Kelvin Arase, who had been making his comeback in recent weeks after missing the vast majority of his time at Rising to date, was listed as unavailable due to injury. He exited last week’s match early in the second half while holding his right hamstring.

Elsewhere, Ihsan Sacko missed the match for personal reasons. According to coach Pa-Modou Kah, the forward will return to the squad on Monday.

The result was that Rising had very few options off the bench in the attack, with only young Conrad Ambursley a senior option.

Luck, or not?

Within just minutes of the match kicking off, Las Vegas found the back of the net off a long distance effort from Themi Antonoglou that caught Phoenix Rising goalkeeper Patrick Rakovsky at the wrong post.

From there, Rising dictated much of the tempo, but didn’t do a whole lot to threaten former Phoenix goalkeeper Triston Henry.

“It was because we didn’t occupy the necessary spaces we needed to occupy.” Kah said. “We get the goal off being in the right position. We wanted to have Dom [Badji] and Hope [Avayevu] besides the one six, but again, we had the ball but we didn’t take care of the opportunities when we had it.”

Eventually, Rising’s breakthrough came off a Daniel Flores cross into the penalty area, which was ultimately turned into the Vegas net by defender Ben Ofeimu.

Still below the playoff line, but it’s tight

The playoff places continued to escape Phoenix Rising on a night that the team picked up a road point, but they still aren’t an unassailable distance away.

In fact, Rising is currently level on points with El Paso Locomotive, who currently sit in the final playoff place. Looking further up the table, Rising is four points behind Sacramento Republic in fourth.

However, Phoenix is still in the position where every team above them — except for Orange County and San Antonio, who occupy the top two positions — currently has at least one game in hand over Rising.

Owain’s take

A point’s a point, I suppose.

Was that an especially enjoyable 90 minutes of football? No. Was it at least not as bad as it could have been? Yes.

When I saw Phoenix Rising’s lineup for the day, and the lack of options on the substitutes bench of an attacking persuasion, I was concerned. When Rising went 1-0 down within minutes, I was even more concerned.

In many ways, that concern was vindicated. Rising had a fair amount of the ball at times, and even managed to push it into Vegas’ territory. But there was a clinical lack of… well, anything clinical at all as soon as they really made it into that final third. If you look at the chances that Rising actually created, and the times that they made Triston Henry in the Vegas net do anything more than the most routine of saves, there wasn’t a whole lot that they produced.

From Rising’s perspective, this may well be three games unbeaten, but it also means that Phoenix has won just two of its last ten games in all competitions. And those three unbeaten have all come against teams that currently sit outside of the playoff picture, with just a solitary win produced.

For Phoenix Rising, is that good enough? Historically, no, it wouldn’t be.

But at Cashman Field, you almost have to wonder: what else could Pa-Modou Kah have really done on the night? The front three was far from the strongest, and the loss of Ihsan Sacko naturally hurt the starting elevn. Kelvin Arase and Damian Rivera watched on in street clothes as Dominique Badji and Charlie Dennis started alongside Gunnar Studenhofft, and if any of you say that you expected that to be a starting front three based upon this season’s form, you would be lying to yourself.

The sole option off the bench in the attacking positions was Conrad Ambursley, who may have been impressive through his first two games off the bench but, let’s not forget, is 19 and still somewhat unproven at the senior level. Even as we watched Rising struggle to get much of anything at Vegas’ net, it was hard to see what changes Kah could have made from the dugout.

And that’s the crux of the issue here. You can talk of the talent in this squad, and there is talent, even if some of it hasn’t shown this season. But you also can’t pretend that, with the starting eleven and substitutes at Kah’s disposal today, he wasn’t fighting with one hand tied behind his back.

What is frustrating is that this is coming at a time where Rising could have tried to kickstart some momentum ahead of what could be a comparatively tougher stretch to the end of the season, especially as Phoenix remains on the outside looking in.

Will the results come soon? Who knows. The standings are tight enough that even the chance of a home playoff game remains alive, if unlikely.

But one thing remains true: we just can’t have an easy season at Phoenix Rising any more, can we?

Top image: Las Vegas Lights FC