Hamid had a fraction of a second to decide. #3 is no slam dunk if you are falling into your goal because you're just as likely to put the ball off the underside of the crossbar or in the roof of your net. On a drive from in front of the goal a gk is not palming the ball up and over, the gk is palming the ball up higher than the bar and the velocity/inertia of the ball carries it beyond the bar. On a header without much pace from an acute angle your gk can push the ball above the bar, but the velocity/inertia of the ball would take it toward the far post, and who knows what is there.
Seriously? Wasn't it Boskovic who created that penalty shot for us? Even if the rest of his performance was lukewarm (which I don't agree with), you can't replace soccer smarts like that very easily. In the playoffs, creating a penalty kick like that might be the difference between advancing and not (I fear not converting that penalty kick is going to haunt us). I've said this a number of times about Boskovic: I don't care that he doesn't "look" like he's trying hard. He creates scoring opportunities for us in a number of ways: smart passes, free kicks and corner kicks and, as shown on Saturday, professionally taking advantage of opportunities that a lot of other players wouldn't be quick-witted enough to notice.
I didn't check out the recording on Saragosa's handball which led to the corner kick from which the own-goal resulted, but on the in-stadium replay on the TV above our heads, that call looked pretty suspect...And Marrufo was poorly positioned to spot it, unless that was something spotted by AR1 or the 4th official.
whoa there, he was clearly talking about Ben's opinion of Boskovic. the postgame comments were very lukewarm, when asked about Boskovic's performance he said something like "we wanted a more dynamic player there so we put Neal in and I love Lewis Neal and his wife and my wife play bridge together" or something to that effect. As much as we all admire Branko's soccer IQ it seems clear that the way he plays does not curry favor with Olsen, for better or worse.
I do concede that was a bad call, but I can't blame the goal on that. We face several corner kicks per game. It's not like the ref gifting them a clear chance on goal. The corner should of been defended better
No, no, I wasn't biting off Hedbal's hed. IIRC, he's also a Boskovic partisan. It's just perplexing that Ben still seems to be wearing blinders when it comes to what he's looking for in a player.
First- it was a blast just to be there for a playoff game again. I loved Korb. He was my MoM. Even took the most dangerous shot on goal we had. Pajoy seems to be the subject of the most controversy. I thought he was ineffective but it was not all on him. As someone pointed out it was incredibly frustrating to see him get the ball with anywhere from 2-5 defenders on him and most of the time nobody was there for him to get the ball to. He can't beat anybody 1v1 so you can only use him as a hold up guy. That's working within his limitations. What I cannot understand at all is that there NO SUBS after the red card. We're at home we should have done something to create more aggression to goal near the end. Whether it's Santos or Salihi. Although with the way we were playing that's not suited to Salihi's game. Pajoy was never going to score for us though. I was so impressed with the poise in the first 15 minutes for an inexperienced team. I thought sure we'd win by 2. We had some good stretches after that but never as good as the first 15, I thought. What worries me most is that all it takes is a a second of genius from Henry to kill us. I was very happy they decided to go with Le Toux over Cooper to start.
It was a better call after seeing it on the DVR. A bit harsh because Saragosa was trying to protect himself, but certainly a defensible call.
Benny's quote, responding to a question about Boskovic's performance: "We wanted to get someone a little more dynamic up there under Lionard Pajoy> Lewis, as usual, came in and did a great job."
Being down a man with not much time left it would be risky to spread the team thin with more offense. Opens up the risk of allowing NY to score a 2nd goal. In the end it's better to bunker down and go to NY tied then unnecessarily risking going to NY down 1 point.
Right before the penalty call (which I think the referee made on the tripping of Pontius and not the handling of the ball), I made the comment to my friend that the first touch of Boskovic was such a difference to that of Pajoy. It is not just the first touch, it is the fact that he knows what he will do with it next. So he does not run around like Pajoy. Who is more effective? It drove me nuts how often Pajoy had his defender beat and instead of running towards the goal, stops to make another move. He also is clueless about moving the ball to open space. I take the guy who plays with intelligence any day over the week against the one who runs a lot.
“My intention wasn’t to throw the ball at the referee,” Najar said through a translator about the act that earned him his second yellow. “I just turned around and threw the ball back and unfortunately the referee was there and the ball hit him. But in no way was it my intention to hit the ref.” I believe him and I think this is important because he may avoid an extra game suspension because of his lack of intent.
I didn't mean replacing a midfielder with a forward or a defender with a midfielder. I meant just getting some fresh legs and someone who can actually attack the goal instead of a guy who just holds up the ball. Theoretically that could result in less exposure to the counter rather than more. I think even down a man we could have taken to them a bit more than we did.
At least, we could have if one of the guys who was responsible for much of our attacking creativity wasn't subbed off right before our next most dangerous pressuring player was ejected for earning Man of the Match honours.
I'd be a bit more convinced if he had shown any sort of "Oops, my bad!" expression on his face. He looked pissed off when he did it and didn't seem to show much remorse afterwards, not that it would have saved him the trip to the showers.
All I'll say is that he looked surprised when it hit the ref and didn't have any beef with the red, he just left the field. These things should be in his favor if a second game suspension comes up for review.
Agreed. He didn't just turn and throw it. He was clearly facing him and saw him. Maybe he didn't intend to with such force, but not showing any expression of remorse could work against him.
He threw it underhanded. The problem is the asshole ref has a big ego and thinks we were there to see him.
The sending off of Najar changed everything. Otherwise he would have made the other two offensive subs (Santos and Salihi) to attempt to get that go-ahead goal. Once they were down to 10 men, it made tactical sense to keep the defensive shape and leave Pajoy in. I suppose you could have brought in another defender (Russell and Dudar were listed available) and pushed Pontius up top to harass, but I think Ben got the tactics right on this, particularly since they weren't trailing and still have another 90 to go.
That thought process makes sense, except for one thing: Pajoy may still have been running hard late in the match, but he was obviously gassed. So was Pontius. A Santos for Pajoy swap there might have at least put some fresh legs out there. Having already used Neal, I'm not sure who else they could've pulled off the bench in the midfield, but they could've at least put one fresh set of legs out there.
Yeah, and if ben was thinking to let the game wind down as a draw, it certainly couldn't have hurt to eat some time with a sub...maybe injecting Russell for Pajoy, keeping 4 defenders in the back, and Salihi for Pontius, leaving a decent tactical mid with fresh legs onfield with a decent tactical attacker with fresh legs.. That said, it was still a cuslterf$#k after the ejection.
I don't get the concept of eating time with a sub. Reading tried that against Arsenal last week and the ref just added the time wasted on the sub to the already stated stoppage time. It turned out to be just enough time for Arsenal to get the equalizer to force extra time.
Yeah, but Marrufo was doing us no favours, and he only added 4 minutes to Saturday's match, which seems low.
The sending off of Najar changed everything. Otherwise he would have made the other two offensive subs (Santos and Salihi) to attempt to get that go-ahead goal. Once they were down to 10 men, it made tactical sense to keep the defensive shape and leave Pajoy in. I suppose you could have brought in another defender (Russell and Dudar were listed available) and pushed Pontius up top to harass, but I think Ben got the tactics right on this, particularly since they weren't trailing and still have another 90 to go.