Game: Houston Dynamo vs FC Dallas Date: Saturday, May 4th Time: 3:00 pm Location: BBVA Compass Stadium, Houston, Texas, United States of America Weather Forecast: AM Thunderstorms; H 86, L 69 Competition: Major League Soccer Opponent's Recent Form: W-L-W-W-W Live TV: KUNV-23 (Univision) [DFW] | Univision [USA] | Twitter [USA] | DAZN [Canada] Radio: FCDallas.com/radio [English] | KFLC 1270 AM La Voz del Pueblo [Spanish] I'd be lying if I said I wasn't cringing at the thought of this game, especially without Pax and especially with how awful we were last weekend.
86 degrees and Houstank humid. Perfect for the team who struggled in the heat last weekend. I can't believe I'm worried about how we'll do in the heat. I find it interesting that even though we get almost no attention from local media, we're getting to be on national TV a lot between Univision and ESPN.
Yeah, I feel like the only seasons we really used the heat to our advantage was Pareja's first 2 or 3 seasons.
Man, we got jobbed in this one. A draw would have been the "fair" result. We were pretty terrible until the end, but they didn't do much to make us pay for our awfulness. Good weekend for the Unkel family. Christina hosed us on VAR. Ted hosed Columbus several times as the center in their game. On the positive side, we scored and we didn't look like we were dying at the end of the game.
FCD took a hot rod up the backside served by the officials. However, I would’ve liked Dallas’ odds had PP been in the 18. This weekend I watched all this year’s games back to back... It was stunning how much PP controls the team.
I think it's time to try Arranguiz at one of those 8/10 spots. Has FCD won a single game this year the Pomykal wasn't in that spot? Too defensive with any combination of Acosta, Cerrillo, Gruezo and Hayes. BTW, Gruezo came out so has Cerrillo surpassed him?
boy howdy - how quickly Luchi's grand promises of something we, not he, deemed' "Luchi ball" have soured into "Luchi boring". When was the last time you saw this team high press, pass the ball around and attempt to dictate play? Seriously, I can't honestly tell you. Buzz spoke a lot, prophetically - even if it was obvious, that this 4-3-3 concept was never going to work in this climate, even with a staff of 3 lunged kiddos tromping about. Seriously, this side was either not fit enough to start with or was burned out so quickly, a team from NoCal (!!!) seemed less affected by May Texas sunshine than our heroes. It was months ago Buzz predicted a formation change would come sooner than later. But if I have a single concern is this nagging question of how we got to a place where a 19 year old blonde haired kid from Farmer's Branch became this team's sole midfield attacker? To be clear, there were two well vetted international mids out there for FCD and I'd be so bold as to say neither were a step better than the 18 year old homegrown fitted along side them. Gruezo's shit touch started the 1st goal sequence and in 90 minutes none of the three made a single pass into the box or the area directly outside the box (aka: Zone 14). With Pax out until June sometime (and that assumes 1- he returns healthy and 2 - doesn't have a performance of the ages and ends up attracting global offers) - how do Luchi fix this? Probably a 4-2-3-1, with Pablo at the 10, but I've seen little to nothing from that guy that tells me he has much in his bag. Mosquera is the human equivalent to a light switch - more on than off this past Saturday - and other than that you can hope Barrios junkyard dogs his way to something (ooops, he's out this weekend due to urinating on too many legs) or that Jesus somehow stumbles across that rare moment someone decides to serve him a ball in or around the box. While my expectations for 2019 were very low (I predicted no playoffs), this has gone limp faster than even I expected. What was interesting and sometimes exciting has deflated into boring even for MLS standards. And I still can't figure out how Pax ended up being the new "we pin all hope on him" version of Diaz.
I think Pomykal is already a more effective player than Mauro Diaz. Diaz benefitted from Castillo and Barrios taking all the attention. When Castillo was sold Diaz was the focus and was exposed. Last season I didn’t want PP on the field. To me he was slow, small and boring. This season he is the glue, brains and heart. He’s getting a fair bit of focus. Maybe teams will figure out how to suppress him but so far... nope. Until he returns it’s gonna be counter attack city. If they want results Mosquera and Acosta have to be on the pitch together. I also think Nelson & Roberts need to be out there as much as possible because they have great touch and actually know what a triangle is.
The loss of Castillo didn't help Mauro, but I'd say the biggest cause of the decrease in Mauro's effectiveness was his Achilles injury.
It's so hard to judge Díaz because two things happened to close to one another that hurt his effectiveness going forward: Castillo departed and his Achilles got hurt. When he was less effective in 2017 and 2018, was it because Castillo wasn't there anymore to take the heat off of him or was it because he just wasn't the same player after the Achilles injury? A little bit of each, I'm sure, but it's hard to say in what proportions. I will say Pax has been more effective than post-Castillo/post-Achilles Díaz, however, but he's way more effective with Acosta, and vice versa.
Well, Diaz has three pieces of hardware already. Now, I'm not in any capacity to comment on the quality in this league. https://www.khaleejtimes.com/double-for-shabab-al-ahli https://translate.google.com/transl...concepcion-a-ser-campeon-en-dubai&prev=search
No Barrios this week due to yellow cards. So our main offense will be from Reggie and Hollingshead overlapping? Maybe the occasional long distance shot from Acosta? Ugh.
Yeesh. I missed this one. Acosta is good, but he's not going to be creating much on his own. Route 1 football and set pieces may be the only offense of any note.
With Pomkal gone for a while they may need a different formation for a bit. Buzz suggested a 4-2-3-1 I believe with Aranguiz at the 10. Then maybe it would be ferreira up top with Mosquera and Badji on the wings with two of Cerrillo, Gruezo and Acosta as the two 6/8 d mids. Could also go 4-1-4-1 with one of those two dmids moving up but I don't think any of those three are creative enough to add anything higher up. Maybe add Roberts late in a game if behind so then there'd be two creative types together with a destroyer behind them. A good question is who is the current better destroyer Gruezo or Cerrillo. Based on recent substitute patterns Luchi prefers Cerrillo.