Orlando City experienced its highest point of the season on Wednesday in a 5-1 blowout win over the New York Red Bulls to reach its first-ever U.S. Open Cup final. Unfortunately, the Lions followed that with one of the season’s lowest lows, by conceding twice in a four-minute span in stoppage time Sunday to turn three points into none at D.C. United. This 2022 season sure has been a roller coaster ride.

Dave Rohe and Michael Citro are here to talk about all the key discussion points from the two matches and, as always, make our selections for Man of the Match. We’ve also got a new signing to discuss, which adds more depth to the midfield. And we’d like to address that whole bus parking thing that people seem to want to discuss, with some input from Junior Urso’s comments after Sunday’s game, actually.

The Pride were back to their non-losing ways after a week off, grabbing yet another draw in what is now four straight matches without a loss (1-0-3). The players and interim manager Seb Hines haven’t given up on this season and that’s about as inspirational a story as we’ve had on the Pride’s side of things this season. Kudos to all involved and long may it continue. We give our thoughts on Sunday’s 2-2 draw at Kansas City, which despite the loss of a multi-goal lead, was certainly a decent result for Orlando, all things considered.

OCB was off this week, and that makes us a little sad because we didn’t get to see Jack Lynn score a goal for the Young Lions. He’ll get a chance this weekend at Toronto and hopefully he’ll net two just to make up for lost time.

This week’s mailbag asked us about purple smoke, what we thought of PRO’s take on the two contoversial calls in the Philadelphia game — which only made us angry all over again — and (for some reason) made us construct a softball team out of Orlando City players. If there’s anything — and we do mean anything — you want us to address on the next show, just ask by tweeting it to us at @TheManeLand with the hashtag #AskTMLPC.

Finally, we gave our key match-ups and predictions for Orlando City’s upcoming match this Saturday against the New England Revolution. Carles Gil’s name might have come up.

Stay safe and enjoy the show!

Here’s how No. 305 went down:

0:15 - The July grind finally came to an end with vastly different outcomes. The bottom line is that the Lions will play for a trophy in September.

47:00 - The Pride get on the scoresheet twice and bring home a hard-fought point against one of the league’s hottest teams.

58:06 - Our mailbagbox and our predictions for the Lions against the Revolution.

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