Well aren't you a ray of sunshine... Atlanta is actually playing worse than us. De Boar is losing the team already it seems. Looks like Gerso is added to the injured list. His wrist is wrapped based on social media posts, so while he could play I won't be surprised if he sits. Also Busio and Freeman are both gone now with the U17s.
Pretty soon we're going to be running Zavagnin out at DM, Vermes at CB, vividox at AM, and Andy Mead at LB. With Buzz coming off the bench to sub out Salloi in the 70th minute.
Zavagnin could still put in a shift. And I'm not so sure Vermes' glare wouldn't keep Martinez from crossing midfield.
Don't believe everything you read. Yeah, Atlanta's plastics are restless, but de Boer's squad is playing better.
Atlanta's PPG is 42% higher than New England's. Now, to be fair, Atlanta has the single worst offense in the league right now. So maybe we'll only let in 2 or 3 goals this weekend.
And before their 1-0 win over the Rapids last weekend, were averaging .13 PPG more than New England was heading into their game in KC.
Honestly I’ve read little from the fans other than the humorous De Boer out twitter accounts. I was going more off the attitude I’ve seen out of players on the field this year.
Well I imagine the players are frustrated. We had 22 shots and 8 on goal against Dallas. 3 of those 22 off frame shots bounced off the woodwork. So yeah, we suck and lost to Dallas. Then we only beat Colorado 1-0. It is frustrating for everyone, not just the players. Anyway, I am looking forward to Sunday's match. It will be nice to play a team that isn't bunkering for 90 minutes.
I have readjusted my expectations for this team. The bar for me now is four goals. Any game (unless playing Colorado) where SKC does not concede four goals is a moral victory. As for De Boer, he is an awful coach. Easily the worst that Inter had run through their revolving coaching carousel before the settled in on Spalletti. He lasted 85 days and had Inter in 12th place in Serie A and eliminated from Europa League.
I used to love watching de Boer's Ajax. I have no idea what happened to him. He used to be a serious rising star and now he's moving towards pariah. I hope we get some starters back. We were a sieve last game against a really bad team. Show up that way again, and we get to be the idiots that help Atlanta regain their shattered confidence.
We were described that way by the leagues old guard that thought Atlanta didn't deserve a team. Now those haters look foolish, but there is some truth. Half the fan base is plastic.
We are 8 games into the season. Judge de Boer after year 2 (assuming he makes it that far). He was brought in to do more than manage the team, We are trying to build a youth academy.
Full house every game. They only sell tickets for the lower 2 tiers at the stadium, so we are capped at about 40k, We will see what happens when they open the upper deck, that is when you get the gaudy 70k numbers. The next game for an upper tier crowd is against Orlando sometime in may.
They actually talk soccer on sports radio in Atlanta. They don't have any idea about what they are talking about and pretty much just echo the plastics, but it is encouraging that they are talking about our MLS team. It wasn't long ago that they snarkily give us World Cup scores.... "in other news, the Armenians drew Iceland Nil-Nil".
I'm patient with coaches. I wasn't talking about my judgment but rather the prevailing opinions of him around the league and fandoms.
Well the fans in Atlanta are restless and, as Frank so undiplomatically put it, spoiled. We sold our best player (Miguel Almiron) and the fans didn't realize how much he meant to the team. We had great success last year, but when Miggy was hurt we struggled. His expensive replacement has been underwhelming, but that will change, and our previous manager was much loved, so he is a hard act to follow. We will get our shit together, hopefully this Sunday.
There really isn’t much to say about Atlanta, other than they are a good team and will cause SKC a lot of problems if PV doesn’t whip that back line into something that resembles a pro quality defense.
I agree that the defense has been, well, bad. However, I also think a good deal of their exposure can be attributed to a midfield that has been remarkably poor at possession in the last few games. We simply turn the ball over in bad spots and wind up facing a counter with a slow and aging defense that is not well-coordinated (ahem, Croizet) and often just generally out of position.
In recent years, SKC quality has been determined by the type of game Roger and Ilie are having. Maybe I'm missing out, watching on a screen, but since the injury, it's like Roger isn't even on the field. Seriously, we've all known he was our engine, but I do think we've underestimated quite how good he was as that engine. I do believe, perhaps, that Zelalem might be a replacement, when he eventually figures out what we're doing. Rowe was brought in as that guy, or at least to allow us to push Felipe over to that spot. But the August swoon was always at least quite a bit about Roger, wasn't it?