The club made some big personnel changes prior to Friday’s game, but the result looked quite familiar like all season long.

With Bobby Murphy taking the helm after the firing of longtime coach Adrian Heath earlier this week, Orlando City were held to a scoreless draw against the Houston Dynamo at Camping World Stadium.

“I think if we’re honest there was a bit of a cloud hanging over us tonight,” said interim coach Murphy. “I think two things: I’m not naive enough to not think there’s stuff we can’t improve upon, but I also know that I take away from this and I told them this in the locker room, right now they’re above the red line and we got our first clean sheet since game three in New York. Those are two really positive things that we can hang on to going into this busy stretch of the next couple of weeks.”

The end result was Orlando’s (4-4-9, 21 points) first clean sheet at home this season, as the Lions provisionally climbed above the last playoff spot in front of 28,104 in attendance.

Kevin Molino provided the Lions with their only chance to score in the 50th minute after making a run at goal, only to have his attempted chip denied by goalkeeper Tyler Deric.

Carlos Rivas missed Friday’s game because of a hamstring injury, according to Murphy. Harrison Heath had his second start of the season, playing 88 minutes as a holding midfielder.

Team captain Ricardo Kaka missed Friday night’s game because of injury, and could be back for Wednesday’s road trip to Red Bull Arena.

The Dynamo have yet to win on the road this season, improving to 0-7-3 this season.

Orlando City travels to face the New York Red Bulls on Wednesday.

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(Photo by Alex Sanchez / The Skyboat) 

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