The walls may be closing in around them, but Valour FC players and coaches are far from slamming their fists down on the panic button.

It’s just the opposite, in fact, with Winnipeg’s professional soccer side rolling up their collective sleeves and now eager to start throwing some punches again — just as they did earlier in the Canadian Premier League season when they were very much in the playoff discussion.

Yet a recent five-game winless streak – one draw against four losses in which they have been out-scored 10-2 – has dropped them into seventh place in the table with a 3-7-7 record.

There are still 11 matches remaining, but the margin for error has shrunk considerably. And critical now is for the club to get back to the formula that was producing points earlier this year in a 2-6-2 start.

“We all know the last few weeks have been difficult for us and we’ve been struggling for results,” said veteran centre back Abdou Samake. “The different parts of our game that made up our identity at the beginning of the year – our resilience, our aggression – we haven’t showcased that enough in our last few matches.

“We’re focussed now on getting our mojo back, the things that made us a dangerous team and a tough team to play against. A lot of players around the league told us that back then – that we were tough opponent. First and foremost is to get that mojo back and then the rest will follow.

“When certain things aren’t clicking over a certain amount of time you can get frustrated a little bit, you lose your confidence, and you start deviating from the things that brought us success.

“There’s still time,” Samake added. “We have 11 games and that’s a possibility of 33 points. But every day matters now. We don’t have any more time to lose, and we can’t afford to fall further. Every team will have problems and if we do they need to be of a new nature, not of our character and how we want to play – the intangibles that made us strong are what we’re trying to return to right now.”

“We want to get back to that dynamic of playing together like warriors.”

Valour’s 11 matches feature a six/five road/home split, but the location won’t matter unless they can start finding the back of the net and get back to the stout defending that had become their trademark earlier in the season. Valour has just 13 goals in 17 matches this season, with their 0.76 goals-per-match statistic the lowest in the league. Their defence has fallen, too, from the stingiest to middle of the pack at 1.18 per match, tied for fifth best in the CPL.

“I spent most of the beginning of the season watching the team (due to injury) and it was very easy to see where we had our successes and where we had our faults,” said fullback Jordan Haynes. “One of our biggest successes is we were a really gritty team. We didn’t care if we had to do that extra few yards, that extra tackle, helping out a teammate, never getting broken down and taking pride in conceding very few goals. We were able to be so close in so many games just by not allowing many goals against. If we can get back to that same team and figure it out in the final third, we’re going to be able to turn it around.

“We’ve got ourselves into quite a tough situation, but the best thing we can do is stay positive and stay together. If we start tearing down each other then we might as well quit and give up now. None of us have thrown in the towel. We’re taking each game like it’s a final and if we can start stacking three points, we’ll get ourselves out of this situation.”

Valour could have midfielder Diego Gutiérrez back this weekend in Vancouver, with GM and head coach Phillip Dos Santos listing him as ‘possible.’ Left back Matteo de Brienne is back training but is still said to be a ‘couple weeks away.’

Dos Santos said the club has had a good week of training as it works to re-establish what Samake and Haynes mentioned above – a defensive foundation that had the squad playing some decent football earlier in the season, even with the offensive challenges,

But in the last stretch that foundation has shown some cracks, especially early in matches.

“We have seven losses,” Dos Santos said. “I went back and looked and in one in Halifax we conceded in the first 10 minutes. Against Cavalry at home (we conceded) in the first 10 minutes. Pacific in our last game; York before that. That’s four of the losses we had. I’ll even throw a game against Ottawa in there where we conceded a PK within the first 25 minutes. That’s something we need to stay away from and, if it does happen, we can’t crack.

“We need to get back to the principles that have made this team very difficult to play against. It comes back to having a solid defensive organization and making sure we’re not giving things away to the opposition the way we have, especially in transition.

“I say this: when you can’t win games, you can’t lose them either. That’s what we need to understand. Right now, we’re in the position where every point is important. We’ll always go with the mentality that we need all our matches, but we need to do it in a responsible manner.”