So, three quick line-up takeaways. 1) Aaronson needs to start over Fabian next week. The kid played well enough to to go straight back to the bench. 2) Haris needs to sit. If Monterio can play that spot then he should be there. 3) As much as I don't want to see Accam on the field, he sort of needs to replace Fafa right now. No excuse for the number of missed chances he has had so far this season. (I also expect the River End to be all over him like they were on Sapong last year if this keeps up)
I was frustrated because Curtin changed the formation after the Aaronson goal. It looked like they went to a 4-3-2-1 with Aaronson on the left and Burke up top alone. This was completely ineffective. With no ball winner in the middle of the park we started bunkering in, what, the 60th minute. Also we conceded the flanks which (surprise) led to the ATL goal. I know he does not have a lot of talent to work with, but Jim is just not a good enough in-game manager at this level. Also, we need a real D-mid instead of Haris.
As soon as we went up 1-0, we went into the shell. My wife and I both said, "you can't do this for 35+ minutes." Moments later Tommy & JP said the same exact thing. Everyone knew it was a terrible idea, but there's JC doing it anyway. It has never worked out for us. Why not keep pushing?
I'm sure Curtin will say that he was responding to Atlanta pressure. Bullcrap. We invited their pressure by sitting back. Or he'll say that we had to play defensively because Creavalle was out. Instead of solving the real problem by not playing Haris in the first place.
I think we can say Wagner is legit. He looked confident in defense all night. Him and Coronel are making Ernst look pretty good this weekend.
So I know there are only 18 Union supporters in the corner but other the Burke and Fafa coming over to look for someone on the first level and sort of accidentally noticing us there was NO acknowledgement from the players. Pretty lame.
People call Big Soccer "negative." We're not that bad: ---------- If Fafa gets that Twitter DM, I wonder what hate mail Rais M'Bolhi got while here.
I cannot stand JP on commentary. He said quote "The Union's performance was very good". What game is he watching? He also thinks tie's are a great result. He needs to quit acting like a tie is a win. Once you do that, then the wins will come.
Pretty good result, since the general consensus was a huge loss...anyway, the new kid scoring was a nice little nugget. Overall they played pretty well, but I can't figure out why after a goal, we get pretty lax. This seems to happen a lot - maybe it's just my imagination but I feel like after every Union goal, we then give one up only minutes later. Anyway, on to Columbus, I hope they show some fight this weekend.
I thought they played well too. Atlanta is in a slump but they still had way more quality and experience on the field than we do (most of those guys are part of the championship team and the one that isn't was the best player in South America last year). Tying those guys in front of 40,000 of their screaming fans is cool with me.
In all fairness, Atlanta were the ones who set off fireworks & fanfare at the end of the match to celebrate ... a draw.
Say goodbye to Aaronson. Curtin doesn’t like to be shown up like this. How many more quality players has he been hiding so he can’t keep running out his favorites.