Chattanooga Football Club defeats the Knoxville Force 4-2

Staff photo by Robin Rudd
Chattanooga's Luis Trude (8) breaks to the ball past Knoxville's Alex Whaddell (5).  The Knoxville Force visited the Chattanooga FC at Finley Stadium Saturday June 27, 2015.
Staff photo by Robin Rudd Chattanooga's Luis Trude (8) breaks to the ball past Knoxville's Alex Whaddell (5). The Knoxville Force visited the Chattanooga FC at Finley Stadium Saturday June 27, 2015.

Chattanooga Football Club coach Bill Elliott had a dejected look on his face in the moments after his team's win over the Knoxville Force on Saturday.

As pleased as he was about the team's four goals scored, he was equally disappointed about the two goals the club gave up.

Still, the 4-2 win over the Force in front of 3,165 fans let Chattanooga FC maintain its four-point lead over the Atlanta Silverbacks Reserves in the National Premier Soccer League Southeast Conference with one regular-season match remaining. It all but assured that CFC will be the top seed in the divisional playoffs, which will start in two weeks.

CFC (11-2-1, 7-1-1) finishes its regular-season schedule with a home match against Nashville FC on the Fourth of July.

"We had two silly mistakes when the match should have been out of reach, but the bright side is that we scored four," Elliott said. "Those things could prove to be important, but if we take care of business next week, it'll be a non-issue.

"We're disappointed any time we don't finish the game strong, but it was a good performance overall - just a little sloppy at the end, which is a little frustrating."

Offensively, the club started to mesh midway through the first half. Luke Winter had two goals in Saturday's win, giving him four in the last two games and a team-high eight for the season.

"We started clicking," Winter said. "We were doing what we needed to do. We wore them down in the first half and outworked them in the second, and as the game wore o, they got tired and we were able to play some balls through the middle."

He scored the match's first goal in the 36th minute on an assist from Luis Trude and in the second half outran three defenders to a long feed over the top from Matt Aldred, slid and got a foot on the ball, angling it past the goalkeeper.

"I've been telling a lot of people I'm quite fast when I get going," Winter joked.

He scored the only goal in the first half, but Nic Edgington stretched the lead to 2-0 in the 57th minute, finishing a cross by Leo De Smedt that was initially headed by Jon Finlay.

John Davidson finished the scoring for Chattanooga, pushing the lead back to three in the 85th minute after a cross by Jack Hopkins. The goal came eight minutes after Knoxville's Rodrigo Anauso scored and two minutes before Tom Joslin scored for the Force.

"There was a lack of concentration," CFC goalkeeper Greg Hartley said. "When you go up three, four goals, it can happen, and it did today. We have some things to clean up - minor things - but it's good we can get them out of the way now so we're ready for the rest of the season."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.

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