No one has been able to explain why FC Buffalo conceded goals in the final two minutes of a half for the last three matches—resulting in two losses and a draw.

You can point to the mental toughness of a young team. Blitzers head coach Brendan Murphy questioned his club’s fitness. Longtime FC Buffalo workhorse Chris Walter suggested it was effort on 50-50 challenges.

Regardless of why the three breakdowns—a goalkeeping mishap at the end of the first half against AFC Cleveland, a stoppage time blunder in Indiana and a 90th-minute shocker against the Admirals on Sunday—occurred, the Blitzers (1W-1T-2L) have nowhere to go but up.

“I don’t have a lot to say for you right now,” a terse and frustrated Murphy said, stewing mostly over FC Buffalo’s habit of allowing untimely goals.

Erie midfielder Andre Landell struck the 90th-minute winner for the Admirals, slicing diagonally past FC Buffalo substitute Jake Rinow and emphatically burying his shot inside the right post.

“[The ball] got cleared up to Karl [Jones]—I think he lost it then won it back, which shows his tenacity and work rate—and got it to me,” Landell said. “I took a touch past one, a touch past another, and then hit it to the bottom corner.”

“I wanted to go back across goal and try to get it on target,” Landell added. “And it did, thank God.”

Landell played a role in Erie’s equalizer as well. In the 56th minute, the pacy, orange-shoed midfielder found space on the left wing in front of FC Buffalo’s Kyle Moraldo. The former Wolverhampton Academy (England) product served a ball perfectly into Karl Jones’ near-post run, and the towering striker smashed a header past a stunned Waleed Cassis.

“I put it in the box and Karl was in the right place at the right time as all good strikers should be,” said Landell, the Tiffin University attacker who plays collegiality with fellow Admirals Jones, Samuel Oki and Oliver Verdult. “[It] definitely took the wind out of [FC Buffalo’s] sails,”

“You could see [the Blitzers] collapse and after that we pushed at them and eventually won the game.”

Landell’s heroics wasted a promising start for FC Buffalo, which mirrored the club’s strong first 45 in Indiana last weekend.

The Blitzers struck first in the 32nd minute after a brilliant run from center back by Chris Walter, the Hartwick College defender making his 2014 home debut for the club.

“I won the ball off an [Erie] giveaway and saw the space and went ‘why not?’,” Walter explained. “The first thing on my mind was ‘shoot it!’, like it always is, but I saw Russ [Cicerone] back post and thought I’d give him the shot.”

Stationed in space from a tight angle on the left side, Cicerone picked out the lower-right corner and cleanly beat Erie keeper Danny Mudd.

It was Walter’s spirited run from central defense, however, that injected life into an FC Buffalo attack that mustered possession but few full scoring opportunities. Even though he had surging winger Jeff Thomas available on his right, Walter’s clipped pass over the two center backs provided Cicerone the time to work his finishing wizardry.

“I don’t think anyone expected me to go as far as I did, so I think we caught them off-guard,” Walter admitted.

Conceding the first-half goal tested Erie’s mettle, but head coach Micky Blythe and assistant Neil Brown were able to instill a sense of urgency in a club that was winless through three matches, including a 3-0 spanking to Lansing United less than 24 hours earlier.

“We’ve lost three on the bounce and everyone’s heads were down, especially at halftime,” Landell explained. “I came in and said ‘We can’t lose this game, 0-4, it just doesn’t look good.’ And we came out flying.”

Aiding the turnaround was a tactical and personnel change by the Admirals’ coaching staff. Burly holding midfielder Michael Lennox came on to harass Cicerone, holding the lightning-quick UB midfielder to relatively few second-half touches.

A second adjustment was moving Admiral midfielder Tyler Collishaw from the flank to the middle, pushing Landell to the outside where he had more space with which to operate. Those two moves paid major dividends, while FC Buffalo’s subs were rather ho-hum in terms of immediate impact.

Can FC Buffalo feel that same sense of urgency that propelled Erie to three vital road points? The next foe is Detroit City FC, which hasn’t lost a regular season game in two years, at 2 p.m. June 8 at Demske Sports Complex.

“Coming off two losses with goals coming off the last two minutes of each half is tough to deal with, let alone against Erie at home in front of this many people,” Walter said, referring to a crowd of 300+ at Canisius College. “It’s a tough pill to swallow, but we’ll be ready to get back at it.”

“We will get better,” Murphy echoed. “We’ll take our lumps, remember these feelings and learn from them.”

FC Buffalo: Cassis; Allen, C. Walter, Ross, Moraldo; Bednarsky, Tagaloa, Cicerone, Hanson, Thomas; Mort

Subs used: McFayden, Hunt, Rinow

Erie: Mudd; Roche, Oki, Suggs, Sullivan; Landell, Verdult, Ott, Collishaw; Jones, Bamber

Subs used: Tattersall, Lennox