Phoenix Rising fell to four points behind the playoff line after a 1-0 loss away to Lexington SC.

Rising struggled in attack, while Braudílio Rodrigues put the hosts up in the second half. Phoenix defender Luke Biasi also received his second violent conduct red card of the season.

Phoenix Rising doesn’t threaten

After a weekend in which Phoenix Rising didn’t have its top attacking option available in Las Vegas, this was supposed to be an opportunity to show something different. Ihsan Sacko, having missed the last match due to personal reasons, was starting, as was Conrad Ambursley, who had impressed in spurts off the bench.

Instead, things didn’t work out.

Despite taking 12 shots throughout the course of the entire match, Phoenix didn’t put a single shot on target against Lexington goalkeeper Oliver Semmle.

This is consistent with prior matchups with Lexington. In three games against Lexington all-time, Rising has recorded just a solitary shot on target, which itself came courtesy of a weak effort to the goalkeeper off the boot of Rémi Cabral.

Lexington gets it done

Where Phoenix Rising struggled to create, Lexington got things done.

It wasn’t without struggles, though. Several chances fell to Lexington’s Nick Firmino in the first half, whose first touch betrayed him on an early opportunity with Patrick Rakovsky off his line. He also failed to get a shot off on a two-man breakway later on.

Still, the hosts found their breakthrough. A one-two punctuated by a backheel from Blaine Ferri set up Braudílio Rodrigues in the 63rd minute, with the Bissau-Guinean player making no mistake on the shot.

Ill-discipline costs again

Despite some struggles, Phoenix Rising weren’t out of this game even at 1-0 down.

However, their efforts were hampered by a straight red card shown to defender Luke Biasi. In the 85th minute, Biasi kicked out at Joe Hafferty from the ground, earning him his marching orders from referee Abdou Ndiaye.

This marks Biasi’s second straight red card for violent conduct of the season. He was previously sent off for kicking out at Danny Trejo at the end of the home match against Oakland Roots.

Owain’s take

2 wins in 11 across all competitions.

It’s not playoff form, is it?

For so long, we’ve spoken about how tight things are in the league. They still are, of course, but we’re seeing the gaps begin to widen. What once was two games to make it into a home playoff place has become two games to even make it into a playoff match at all.

And with every game, that’s one fewer opportunity to make up ground. It’s not an especially helpful combination.

Against Lexington, Rising failed to get anything going in the attack. Yes, there may have been a couple of chances from Ihsan Sacko that barely went over the crossbar, but Oliver Semmle wasn’t forced into a single save. If you can’t get a single shot on target, you have no business claiming to deserve anything from the match.

Then, there’s the ill-discipline late in the match. Was the game already gone at that point? Potentially. But Luke Biasi showed such a poor lack of judgment that I can’t find any defense for him. It’s not the first time he’s done that, having kicked out at Danny Trejo earlier in the season.

He’s not the only one to let their frustration get the better of them, either: in the last home game, midfielder Hope Avayevu decided to blast a spare ball in frustration at the stands during play, hitting a supporter in the process and honestly risking disciplinary action had the match officials picked up on it.

Yes, you want to see a degree of frustration from players, competitiveness and passion in games. But there’s a fine line between passion and shooting yourself in the foot, and all too often lately, it feels like we’re seeing this team lean into the latter.

So how do you fix a problem like Phoenix Rising? Fingers will inevitably be pointed at Pa-Modou Kah as the team’s coach, but if he alone pays for the failings of the team so far this season, then the club is once again missing the point. So many things have gone wrong from top-to-bottom, and to point the finger at a manager alone in a situation like this would not deal with the deeper issues.

At some point, the problem has to stop being the coach themselves and start being the people who set them up for failure. If you’re arguing that your approach will finally work if you were given just one more manager to implement it properly, then at some point, it becomes clear that you’re clutching at straws to justify your position.

And when we see the club off-field crumble away bit-by-bit over the years, then which of the several coaches we’ve seen in recent years should that be blamed on? Or is there a more obvious common denominator?

I’m aware as I write this that it might feel very samey, and as though I’ve written this column several times before. Believe me, I join you in feeling that way. But we’re at a point now where tinkering around the edges of Phoenix Rising Football Club simply isn’t going to fix things, and I’m simply unable to ignore the elephant in the room.

You can’t just address the issues on a solitary poor night in Lexington and expect to see the light at the end of the tunnel, much as you can’t just expect to fire a coach and turn things around when none of the evidence over recent years suggests that will make a substantive difference. I’m not suggesting that we’ll see an immediate turnaround if the club takes more drastic steps, but at least there’d be an opportunity to see positive change in the long-run.

A refusal to rip off that Band-Aid is just going to lead to more, and more, and more of the same. We’ll be back here in two weeks. We’ll be back here in two months. We’ll be back here in two years, should the club last long enough for us to be able to say that.

So, will anything change? I guess time will tell, but I can’t say I’m especially confident. Not in a positive way, at least.

But at least we’ve got a Saturday off from the Phoenix Rising circus next week.

Top image: Lexington SC