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Pascal Jansen addressed his future should New York City FC fail to make the playoffs this season, with the club in a second-half tailspin trying to keep postseason hopes alive.
Jansen simply replied, “No,” during a press conference on Thursday when asked if he’s had those conversations with the front office.
Publicly, there has been no indication that Jansen’s job is in jeopardy, but amid a skid that has seen NYCFC win just once in their last 13 regular-season games — and go from potentially hosting a playoff match to just hoping to be in one — speculation has started to bubble among the club’s fans.
New York City FC’s lack of answers for their struggles has added to the frustration during the second half of the season.
The club came away with a point over the weekend in a 1-1 draw with LAFC at Citi Field, but NYCFC still fell further down the table and, despite a better effort overall, nearly watched Son Heung-min score late in stoppage time had it not been for the goalpost.
The narrow margins that have been the difference between picking up points and no points have been a recurring theme, one that has often found NYCFC on the wrong side of things and has put the club’s playoff hopes at stake.
Jansen said on Thursday ahead of the club’s weekend matchup in Orlando that there were positives to take from the draw, but acknowledged the attacking game just hasn’t been there for the club.
New York City FC has scored just four goals in their last five games while conceding eight in that same span.
“There’s moments where we are not determined enough to get ourselves in the box and in positions in order to have a bigger opportunity to score a goal,” Jansen said. “What you saw at the end of the game, when we have to go all in in two counterattacks and make sure they don’t get a second goal, Unfortunately, that has happened more often to us than we would like to.”
When asked why those mistakes and circumstances have continued to happen, Jansen said that there was “nothing in particular” that he notices.
“There’s nothing in particular that I can point at at this moment in time to have an explanation why the mistakes happen and to the people that the mistakes are made,” he said. “It happens in our game. That’s obvious, and unfortunately, those mistakes have a massive magnitude on our game.”
NYCFC is down to four games left in the regular season heading into the matchup against Orlando on Saturday, and Soccer Datavizer has the club’s playoff probability at 20 percent.
“We try to turn [the season] around every day, obviously, because we are fully aware of the situation we’re in,” Jansen said. “I think LAFC is also a positive reflection of that, because I think overall we played a pretty decent game as a team, without the attacking impact.”