San Jose Earthquakes - Real Salt Lake (Sunday, 3/3) postgame thread [R]

Wow. Wondo, this one is on you buddy.

Hernandez was terrible on the opening goal. Either play the man goal side and actually stay goal side, or play the trap, dont drop 5 yards off of him and still let him run by you.

Wondo also missed about 5 great chances, which really hurts.

Those two things were the difference in this game. Sabario's second was just icing set up by the previous failures.

A DP shows another DP how to score. How many shots did Saborio have compared to Wondo? Gotta step it up.

Well, that sucked!! Should have won the game made way too many mistakes.

Wondo becomes a DP and gaffs all of his fairly easy chances.
He got my award for choker of the match.

But really guys, half of our squad is injured and we were showcasing a C team, Obviously we weren't going to walk away from a A squad RSL.

TBH, If this squad takes the field the next three games, I see 4 opening season losses. But then again NY did shank a win so..hell. who knows.

Who said that? Must have been some super dumbass.

We had plenty of talent out there on the pitch. Yes, the injuries don't help but this was a game the Quakes should have put away early. And that was no C team in the Quakes unis.

Painful.

Severely missing Chavez, Beita, and the bash bros. oh, and that guy that went to England... Our roster flat out sucked, not helped by Frank's insistence on playing Ramiro. Putting in Cato? Seriously? Harden is awful, please Beita you can't come back soon enough, or another outside back. Wondo had serious head games, psyching himself out. Come on Wondo..

And I say this over an over, but Baca is just not that good. We always have a gaping hole in the central midfield, right behind the forwards, in which we never win balls.

Long ball, terrible play from Hernandez as usual, everyone jumpy. What a POS game.

Can't wait to see how the Energy Drinks are going to demolish us next week. It is not looking pretty, guys.

The only guy I could say we missed today was Chavez. Beita is not going to play CB for Jason nor is Harden quick enough to either. Neither Gordon nor Lenhart are necessary to put away the chances we had. Nor do any of the guys out play Attacking-Mid a void we still need to see filled.

We don't have a plan B when wondo wiffs. What angers me is we had over a month to know we needed quality reinforcements and we get Cato, Jahn and other supplimental draft crap.

Well, we will agree to disagree.
Gordon and lenny scored a large bulk of our goals last season also.

Yes this was a C team, the talent wasn't C for sure.
But our new forward and defenders haven't really meshed with us quite yet and half of our starters were out. So essentially we were a C team. And our new draft pick players? yup.


Wondo choked. And hell with all the pressure on him, I could see why. But its one game and I hope they turn it around next week.

Plan B is long ball to Gordo or Lenhart.

Wondo had his off games last season. He always seems to psyche himself out a bit in the big ones. That said, I think history shows very well that he'll bounce back.

For me it wasn't the roster, just the mis-use of his roster. FY ran out David (Fucito) against their two Goliaths without a slingshot. The Quakes were badly in need of a bigger target forward. I know Jahn is no Lenhart (yet) but neither is Fucito and he never will be, and Jahn at least has some size to make a fight out of it.

And why you start "one bone-head play per game" Hernandez over Attakora is beyond me. I would like Jason a lot better a right back if you really feel the need to play him, and he'd do as well as Harden there is not better.

Yes, this team really missed Chavez. Chavez unbalances opposing D's so well when he attacks with speed. And Dawkins to a lesser extent did the same thing. Sadly Shea and Corrales didn't.

Quakes played great in the first half, especially given we were missing the diagonal attack element of Chavez (and of course, Dawkins, but might as well get used to that), and both our hold up men.

It's remarkable Wondo got as many chances as he did given that, and he didn't make the keeper do anything.

I like Fucito a lot, but more as a Wondo backup than a partner. We've never been threatening without a target guy.

All told, I don't see this result as any more negative than that first loss to Houston in SF last year. But we need our big guns to get healthy and Wondo's gotta get it together.

I thought Garza was fairly effective given that RSL was packing it in.

I think the D was good too. When you pressure for an hour and fail to score, eventually the other team is gonna get a counter on you.

Meh what do you expect we're missing half our starting roster from last year.

On to the next one.

Gonna be a bumpy ride this season that's for sure!

I'm still confused at to why this lineupe was a C lineup? We had 2 players (Harden, Fucito) in the starting lineup who were not starters for the Quakes last year and both are MLS veterans. Our bench was very weak, yes, but this starting 11 was by no means a C lineup. It was a starting lineup of MLS veterans. No excuses for tonight. Wondo should have buried a couple of his shots. It's what he is paid to do and he got the DP status because of it. I have to hang this loss on his broad shoulders. Would I like to see the Bash Bros back...sure...but they were not the reason why we lost.

Yeah, I would feel worse about it if they played badly. Overall, not bad considering the side that was out there, and very good in the first part of the first half. Just one of the games where the finishing didn't happen.

I've said in the past that Wondo's a good but not great finisher, but in terms of getting chances, he is off the charts. That's the reason he scores so many goals - he finds ways to get so many chances, and he (usually) finishes pretty good, but not great. Tonight he had an amazing number of good chances, but his finishing was poor. It's happened before, and he's bounced back, as others have said, so I'm not worried about it.

Salinas gets an A+ for effort - he hustled his butt off, but lost the ball many times when he ran into pressure. He is making more cut-in moves, but so far hasn't been very effective with it. Simon Dawkins he is not, but at least he is trying, and there was no one else to really force the issue in that way. He doesn't have the control to hold the ball under pressure in those situations where he is doubled. He would typically take a touch that was a bit too heavy and lose the ball.

By the way, what happened to the "lots of national team experience, the coaching staff is familiar with" guy who the Quakes were supposedly getting on loan?

I'm not too worried about our team to be honest. When you miss that many chances and let the other team get in the game, three guys, Plata, Backerman, and Saborio are good enough to figure out where that little slice of space is. Even though we had more possession, it didn't take those players listed more than a few chances to finish. We had good possession and did create chances so it's really finishing and defense that we need work on. Our midfield work was good though. We might have enough potential to be a middling team with the available players, which, if we get the rest of the guys back, should be enough to be an MLS Cup contender much later in the season.

Just wanted to point out RSL was missing starting defenders Borchers and Wingert as well as starting midfielders Grabavoy and Morales so this was definitely not our A squad by any means. Match went about as I expected given both teams were missing several starters and it was the first match of the season. Surprised Wondo missed so many easy opportipunites and that was the difference in the game.

They had a lot of possession in the 1st half, but the 2nd half evened out.