Kansas hoping to bounce back

Sporting Kansas City coach Peter Vermes is confident his team will bounce back from consecutive MLS defeats.

The Eastern Conference leaders won their opening seven games, but have suffered losses to the Portland Timbers and Montreal Impact in their last two outings.

Vermes said he was confident Kansas City would respond to the defeats when they meet the Chicago Fire on Saturday.

“We know who we are as a team. I think that with this group of guys, we’ve always realised when we’ve made a mistake,” Vermes said.

“And when we didn’t do something well, we then talked about it and responded well from that and we’ve learnt and I don’t think that’s going to change with this group of guys.”

Kansas City have failed to score in the defeats, and have netted just 12 goals in their first nine games this season.

Vermes urged his side to forget about the clashes against Portland and Montreal, and said he was eager for Kansas City to end their losing run.

“Teams are going to go through different types of situations, whether it’s that they lose a couple of games or win a few and you have to be continuously ready for the next game,” he said.

“Right now we can’t do anything about Portland or Montreal. The only thing we can do anything about is be ready for Chicago and that’s our mentality.

“We know the mistakes we made and we know what we have to do, but Chicago is a different team and we just have to get ready for that game and that’s how we are approaching it.”

Midfielder Graham Zusi said Sporting Kansas City had lacked urgency in the loss to the Montreal Impact.

“You know in no way are we happy with the way we played this last weekend. We are not dwelling on it, but it’s in the back of our heads to play differently,” he said.

“There wasn’t too much urgency on the field this past Saturday and we’ve been working this week to change that.”