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Houston hits the road to face struggling NYC

May 29, 2015 - 4:27 PM New York, NY (SportsNetwork.com) - The Houston Dynamo will aim to get back on track when the club heads to Yankee Stadium to take on a struggling New York City FC side.

Houston's two-game winning streak was snapped with a 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy last time out on a stoppage-time goal from Alan Gordon.

The Dynamo controlled much of the action in the match and the Galaxy managed to put just two shots on target the whole game, but Houston still failed to leave the StubHub Center with anything.

"We came here in good form. I think we certainly deserved something tonight, we never got it, but that's what this game does," Houston head coach Owen Coyle said following the defeat. "It can be a cruel, cruel game. We have to pick ourselves up and we go again."

Coyle's men have conceded one goal in each of their last five games, and they are encountering a New York City team that has struggled in front of goal all season.

NYC has managed just nine goals in their 12 games so far, and after a 2-0 loss to Real Salt Lake that saw Jason Kreis' team put only two shots on goal over the course of 90 minutes, the Dynamo will feel as though they have a good opportunity to keep a clean sheet.

The loss to RSL followed a familiar pattern for Kreis and his team as the club gave up the first goal inside of 30 minutes and was left to try and battle back.

John Stertzer scored in the 25th minute for Salt Lake and Alvaro Saborio added another early in the second half as NYC's winless streak reached 10 games, four short of the record for an expansion team set in 2011 by Vancouver Whitecaps FC.

"What felt like their first real opportunity, which comes off a breakdown from us, losing the ball right in the middle of the field, they score a goal on," Kreis said following his team's latest setback. "We're in a familiar territory where we come back at halftime and we're down 1-0."

In six of NYC's seven defeats this season, the club has given away the game's first goal inside of 30 minutes, and it's a trend that must stop if the team is going to snap out of its current funk, which has seen New York claim just one point from the last six games.

There is certainly a lot of frustration around the team at the moment, and rookie Connor Brandt thinks the changes must begin in training.

"I think we just need to push each other in training," said Brandt, who came off the bench for the final nine minutes in his MLS debut against RSL. "We actually just talked about that in a team meeting, that we probably need to be on each other a little bit more in training to get better, and hopefully it will show in the games."