I don't think the criticisms were fair in the conditions Chandler was faced with. Namely the heat, he looked tired as hell early on and I am willing to bet it was pretty much just the heat that affected Chandler. We should give him the benefit of the doubt and hope come the Costa Rica much he will have improved significantly
Chandler looked like Beckerman out there with concrete boots, I expect him to rebound and have a good game against Costa Rica where it will be nice and cold.
Talk about a bad first impression. It didn't help that the damn formation basically invited Honduras to attack his side. His defending was Wynne/Bornstein-esque. We've seen him play better than this, let's hope he bounces back. I wouldn't worry too much unless it becomes a trend. Cherundolo recently had knee surgery + plus age, you have to figure he doesn't have much left in him.
All the Germans looked bad. I suspect it wasnt a coincidence. The weather report at game time was 90 degrees and 70% humidity or "feels like" 113 degrees. I doubt any of the Germans have ever experienced playing in those conditions.
He had a tough job under tough conditions. Not much support in front of him against Honduras. I have been lukewarm about TC this whole time but I wouldn't let this game shade my opinion too much. He kept running until the end of the match, not easy to do in those conditions. He'll show better.
I thought a lot of (especially) his and Johnson's undoing were JK's tactics. He was expected to cover the entire flank by himself in the heat on a spongy field. He had to run up field to provide width, then recover to mark the Honduran outside mid and faced a lot of 2 vs. 1s defensively. If you gave him a legit outside mid on his side, I bet a lot of his problems magically disappear.
I think this accurately paints the picture of the conditions he faced. Aside from getting burned hard right outside the box with the fake back that he had seen all night, I wont put too much emphasis on this game. I've seen the man shut down Bayern and Dortmund forwards while covering a ton of ground. Throw in the weather, short rest and traveling half way around the world. I think he'll show better in the future.
I'm even willing to cut him a bit of slack for any poor 1 vs. 1 defending because I think that was a symptom of being absolutely exhausted. I'm hoping the lineup and tactics put him in a better position to succeed and he shows better in the next game.
I still have hopes he manages to be another good, yet inconsistent USMNT player. Say, like Boca or Edu or Bradley. Dolo is perhaps the most consistent guy of the lot: if I've seen him have three bad games for the NT in total, that's it.