Columbus Crew SC's Caleb Porter: "We deserved more" in Montreal

MONTREAL -- Crew SC found themselves on the losing end of a 1-0 result in Montreal in Week 7, but manager Caleb Porter felt his team should've come away with something.


“There have been some games this year where we got the result, we got the three points, but maybe didn't play all that well,” Porter said postgame. “I thought this was a game actually that we deserved more out of it. I thought we played really well. We had good control. When you're looking at the chances in the game, we had more chances than they did.


“I can't remember a quality chance that [Montreal] had until late when we were pushing for the goal where Zack [Steffen] made the save, other than shots from distance," he continued. "I thought it was actually one of our better performances. And I told that to the team.”


The 55th minute game-winning goal by Montreal’s Harry Novillo was the first conceded by Crew SC in three games since a 3-0 loss at the Philadelphia Union on March 23. It was created after pressure from Montreal forward Maxi Urruti forced a turnover by center back Jonathan Mensah.


“They were fortunate, obviously," Porter said. "Maxi [Urruti] created a goal out of nothing. Credit to him, it was a play that we knew could happen. We talked about it, with him being a great pressing player. We’ve got to learn from that moment ... we didn't manage it well.”


Ahead of their next match in Week 8 against Porter's former club, the Portland Timbers, Crew SC don't expect to be tweaking much.


“I feel like we're a lot closer to the team that we need to be and I don't feel like we're going to need to change much this next week,” Porter said. “Whereas in some weeks, even though we've gotten the result I felt like the performance maybe wasn't as good as it needed to be and we needed to address a lot, this is a different."