Post-match: United vs. Red Bulls 4/12/2014

A DC United player making a far-post run, a DC United player scoring on a header and Chad Ashton emphasizing far-post runs. None of this sounds quite real. I'm not sure if I'm living in reality. Maybe I should check myself in to St. Elizabeths.

 

I'm not saying they didn't need the reminder. I'm saying it's disturbing that they should need to be reminded.

 

He doesn't really believe in them. He just said that to f*@k with your head.

 

Definitely a fools gold type of win, now that I've had time to watch more and reflect on it.

I think we're still in for a brutal season.

 

Well, I have to agree with you on that point. Sadly.

 

Brutal? The team only needs 9 points to tie last year's total. 9.

Last year was brutal. I don't think we'll be seeing that this year.

 

I guess my bar is slightly higher (lower?) for a brutal season than "not literally the worst season in MLS."

We got an extremely timely goal against a bad team and clung on for dear life for the rest of the entire match against said team. Last week we won a game against a mediocre team with the same strategy, except it was even luckier because own goal saved our asses again (I know we scored in stoppage but we wouldn't have if Chicago hadn't been chasing the game by that point).

I mean, I'm happy for the points, but we haven't "progressed" on field in my opinion at all. We're going to get exposed - over and over- by average to good teams.

 

I know, it's ugly. But as long as the attendance is creeping upward, I'll be happy.

 

Everything you're saying is true (except that it was New England in the previous match, not Chicago). But still, we did it against Jersey, and beating them under any circumstances at all will make me happy. If we play better than them and win, ha ha, Jersey, you suck; if we play worse but still win, ha ha, Jersey, we suck and we still beat you.

 

all last year, I watched this same game, but we were the ones at the opposite end of the score-line and desperation play.
I'll take this way as a sign of progress, and we can "convincingly win" during the playoffs, or perhaps next season

The first step on the way to winning convincingly is to first learn to win ugly (or so I've read over the years, not sure how true it actually is)

edit: Amen Brother Bootsy, pass the plate!

 

But in the first half, I think we played pretty well. Somewhat lucky to not give up a goal (but also extremely unlucky not to get a PK when Arnaud was taken down), but we didn't look too bad. I'd really like to see Silva back instead of Arnaud. Despite his goal, I think he doesn't offer a ton in the attack.
I'd also like to see Doyle start and play 55 or 60 minutes and see what EJ can do off the bench, although I assume that won't be allowed since he's a DP.
I know it could be months away (or never), but with Pontius able to contribute, that could help us be even more dangerous and have legitimate options to come off the bench like Rolfe and Doyle.
We could be in for a brutal season, but we could be in for a season where we compete in lots of games, but end up just good enough to be in games and not good enough often enough to win as much as we need to to make the playoffs.

 

We will definitely get exposed in some games. Even good teams get exposed by other teams and we aren't even to that level. We will steal some wins from good teams and sometimes lose to bad teams, but its far from brutal. Brutal would have been to play essentially the same game as Saturday but lose 2-0 because the keeper makes a save on Arnaud's shot and NY ends up with average to poor finishing, but still gets a couple. We did that a lot last year.

 

It was a crazy night, alright.

 

Whoops, thanks for the correction. Again, I agree - I'm happy we beat RBNJ, but I guess my overall point was I don't see any progress and it was really rather a lucky win, IMHO.

 

You must not have watched the Columbus game.

 

I was at the game. Let's see what happens when we play the same team again this weekend, I guess. I'd be hard pressed to see us doing any better than the 3-0 housing we suffered through in March.

 

How much of that can we assume to be the effects of a different preseason training regime?

 

Good point.
But for most, anything short of mid-table will be dragged down to "brutal" by the law of averages.

 

From my point of view this team is where I expected it to be. Able to be mediocre and poor teams, struggles against the better teams. So the next two weeks we are in for bad times, Columbus (can't really believe they are a good tema but that is what the numbers say) and Dallas.

United is shooting for the 4 or 5 playoff spot in the East. Maybe a playoff game or two.

 

I've been at every home game and watched the Toronto game on the video feed -- I would disagree strongly with comments that this team has not progressed. For the first 40 minutes Saturday night, DCU was the dominant side by a great deal. The defensive shape was good, the passes were connecting and the players actually appeared to know where each other would be. In the second half, Arnaud ran out of gas and the Cows began to control midfield -- I thought Jeffrey would stabilize that issue, but he didn't. However, this team looked far more composed than the one that played Columbus or Toronto. Remember, on Saturday night there were only two players starting on the pitch that played for DCU last year -- Kitchen & DeLeon. Doyle was the third and he played 6 minutes. For all intents and purposes, this is a new team. Parke and Boswell appear to have some type of understanding now and, for one game at least, Cristian played competent defense. Can this team be exposed? Of course, in a parity league, all teams are trying to hide some deficiency. My wife suffered through enough of last season that she was dubious about going to RFK again. Her comment -- they played much better, with some cohesion -- not like last year at all.

 

I was gonna say...after the game Ashton probably walked up to him and asked him to hold onto the ball better in such situations.

 

I couldn't catch the game is there anywhere in particular you guys are rewatching the game or do you all have MLS live.

 

I dunno about other people; I recorded it off of a replay on MSG. Unfortunately, something earlier in their schedule must have gone over its scheduled time; so my recording (in the middle of the night) includes the tail end of some European match I don't care about, and loses the last ~20 mins of our game.

 

i was quite encouraged by our play from like minute 10 to 30, some decent play, that makes me hopeful. not an overall great performance but a bit of potential here and there