First goal - he put it in the one place it could go. Second goal - bad giveaway prior - didn't close out the shooter (I know they're fast, it's tough). Sabo, Espindola, Gil, Paulo, all seem to be struggling connecting passes up top. Every flick, through-ball, chip, seems way off. So we're not getting our possession into their box much we lose it near midfield. Steele's completed two straight passes! I predicted 2-2 but it's a long shot at this point, still Vancouver isn't bunkering.
from the moment steele came on the pitch he was the best rsl player on it. his energy and urgency was first class what use boys forget is this is steeles first year in mls.
Steele was very strong tonight...borderline excellent. Paulo was hesitant and crap until touching the ball past his defender and serving in that assist. I want to call Kwame 'Kollege' cuz his initials - KWS are like CWS (the college world series). It's a good nickname. Caps were a little better. Their shots and ops were at least more dangerous.
Fork this team. Their done. This team needs an enema. They subbed in Gil so he could get a better view of the game? Why? Kyle was already watching the game for us out there. We needed someone else to stand and gawk? Do a little play by play? Not much you can say good about this game if you are talking about a title contending team. For a mid table team trying to make the playoffs not so bad. This team is soft, soft, soft. Vancouver bullied them off the pitch tonight. I bet they even brought RSL some tissue. RSL needs a shake up of some kind because this team is spiraling, nose diving, going down in non-chalant like flames. Hustle the F*&k up would you and play like you give a sh1t. There were some positives somewhere someone will point out and they will be right but this current RSL team as constituted is in serious trouble and it doesn't seem like they can see it. Excuse, excuse, injury, turf, bounce here, bounce there, and we are in the game. Blah, Blah, Blah BULLSH1T. Here's some of the things I think need to happen or could happen not should happen: Beltran=Trade. Johnson=Trade Steele=Bench Gil=Who knows. He's not going to Europe any time soon unless it's on vacation with the family. Kyle=Play like the captain of a team that cares. Sabo=Get him someone to get the ball to him. Fabi=take a shot once in awhile Grabs=Try not to get knocked down. Trade Wingert=? Borchers=Never trade Watson-Sireboe=Much improved Olave=Knee Rimando=Some offense Morales=A trainer that knows what the f*&k is going on Mansally=Playing time Paulo Jr.=Time machine Enzo=Who? Seba=Is he still on the team? Reynish=? This is not a championship caliber team. I'm as pollyanna as they come but something needs to be done to light a fire under this team. Their coasting like they are just waiting for the playoff match-ups to be announced. They have to be the slowest team on earth let alone MLS. Are the young guys so bad that they can't get any playing time on team that's lost 3 games in a row? You earn championships. With the exception of Sabo, Borchers and a couple others, this team is not playing like they think they need to earn anything. They play like they are waiting for the stars to align and everything to go their way and someone to hand them the trophy. Maybe someone needs to be sacrificed to let them know that that isn't the case. And no, not literally sacrificed. This team needs to get better. That's all there is to it.
First half looked like we cared. There was actually movement off the ball and some good team defense. Had we kept that up all game I think we would've scored one earlier. We had them plenty frustrated and seemed to have better control of the game. That first goal was unlucky with the deflection on the clearance and after that we completely lost interest in the game. Wingert could've done a better job closing space on Richards for the 2nd goal. There is 0 heart with this team now, and I'm waiting to see how people can justify how we've played the last 2 months. 4-7-1 is not championship caliber. Hopefully Morales isn't truly injured. I know they said it was precautionary so who knows if it'll keep him out for any length of time.
And, we did. Two goals given up. The first there was nothing to do about, just bad luck of Wingert being in the wrong place and blocking the clearance that fell to the feet of a Vancouver player. The second was a bad midfield giveaway followed by lack of closing down players in dangerous positions. Richards (aka, the RSL killa, whom I wish was in Claret and Cobalt) ripped a fine shot for a goal. One off bad luck, one off defensive error. At least our goal was nicely taken in the run of play. Wonderful cross by Paulo, Jr, who did look decent, and clean header by Borchers. Watson-Siriboe looked good, as did Rimando. I think teams are preventing Beckerman from getting the ball, because he didn't see much of it. Kreis needs to figure out something besides a boom-ball to work around that tactic. We don't have the speed to play boom-ball. <sigh>Hope Morales is not further injured, or this season is sunk. He's been slow to regain confidence and another injury might be a terrible psychological set-back.
Thoughts: For the first 50-60 minutes I was actually quite pleased with our overall play. We didn't have much in terms of offense, but you could tell they worked on team defense this week and it showed. We actually looked rather good. With that said, as soon as we gave up that first goal, the whole team dropped their heads and looked like they had given up hope. Showing not only do we lack mental strength, but we are missing someone to light a fire under the guys asses to play through adversity. This lead to the second goal for Vancouver as we didn't close in on the ball not only on the shot, but on the cross that preceded it and the lead up to that cross. Really bad sequence from the whole team defensively. Nobody looked like they wanted to put in any extra effort on the play while Vancouver had multiple players do just that. I don't get what we are trying to do offensively in getting Fabi the ball so early and then not sending any midfielders forward. Espy gets the ball wide, looks up, and the only player above/level with him in the attack is Sabo. Sabo is always surrounded by 2 if not 3 defenders so our game becomes either: a) espy trying way too much to get by guys or b) a really really shitty cross. Speaking of crosses, do we practices these ever? I've never seen a team sooooooo bad at crossing the ball at a professional level. And it's not just offensively, anywhere on the pitch we can't connect a pass longer than 20 yards through the air. Oh, speaking of not practicing things: set pieces? This team used to be so dangerous on set pieces offensively. Now? hell, you might as well kick it out for a corner so we don't get countered as easily. I just started to laugh when KB was taking them. Vancouver is without their best CB and GK and we still can't find a way to get anything going on dead ball situations. Not because we don't have guys making good runs, but because we don't give them a ********ing chance. What exactly do we have to do to keep Javi healthy? Did someone at least go up to the Vancouver physio and say "hey, can you look at this?" He seems to know his shit. Wager: Demeritt recovers quicker/properly from his injury before Javi does despite it being one that is hard to figure and Javi's having been over a year old now. Our 2 biggest moves this off-season were shipping off old players and not finding replacements for what they brought. First, and this one is getting more and more obvious as the season wears on, is Andy Williams. We don't have a guy in the middle to replace Javi in terms of good attacking passes. We have a bunch of guys who like to keep the ball via safe passes. We don't have a guy that sees the game offensively. Second is Robbie Russell. This one really sucks for Sabo. We don't have anybody on this squad who can whip in a cross like Russell. Hell, we don't have anybody who can cross a ball decently 2 or 3 times out of 10. Lastly, yeah KWS and Steele played great. When they are our best players, though, it tends to not be a good thing. No offense to those guys, but they aren't killers of any sort in this league.
Funny moment in the broadcast last night: Vancouver is up 2-0 with about 15 minutes left in the game. Dunny is talking (go figure) about how Vancouver needs to look to possess the ball here at the end to kill off the game. While Dunny is saying this, RSL has the ball, but they aren't acting like a team down 2-0 at all. In fact, they are acting like a team up 2-0. In the 5 minutes that Dunny was talking about this, RSL pushed the ball into their offensive third of the pitch maybe 1 or 2 times - each of which was quickly passed back to the middle third. That kind of summed up the night for RSL. The one stat that Kreis seems to care about is possession. It's like he expect some form of reward for keeping the ball more than the other team. It's so ********ing infuriating. We are like Barcelona/Spain expect we don't have the defense to back up our boring play.
15, you pretty much said what I was going to say. You're getting better! Did anyone watch the SJE/SS game last night? What a fun game to watch! Lots of movement on both sides. ..up and down the field quickly. Speed, speed, speed. Pretty much what we aren't seeing with RSL right now.
This has been Wingert's Achilles Heel since he's been here. Its because he knows that if he closes he'll probably get beat, so he tries to keep a line between the goal and the ball instead. For him, this makes sense. Richards would have run right past him had he closed the space. The problem is that anyone with decent shooting or passing ability ends up with tons of space fairly close to the box. Richards took advantage, and Richard's isn't that great of a shooter. He had a wide open net earlier in the game and sailed the ball up into the stands. So, can't really fault Wingert there, he was doing what his skill set allows him to do. The bigger problem was the ease in which the build-up was allowed to happen.
So glad I didn't waste my time or make any effort to watch this game. It sucks that I even have to make a comment like that. Embratsu.
I always knew our team was slow, you see that complaint all the time in this board. But after watching some Copa Sudamericana and Olympic football it finally dawned on me just how ridiculously slow we are. It felt like whenever RSL had the ball the game went into slow motion.
I think we should trade Sabo. After all, he didn't have a hattrick which is the minimum requirement for him to stay on the team.
I truly enjoyed watching RSL's practice session Saturday. I can't wait to watch them play a real game now at full speed..... That's kind of how I felt after watching the last few games actually. Very little urgency in this squad. I think patience and not loosing composure has paid off for Kreiss in the past but this team is too far from the tipping point of real success at this point to sit back and wait calmly for the stars to align. I'm missing Andy Williams.