I watched a bit of Durkin in a preseason match and he was excellent. Very skillful with the ball at his feet.
You know, if they just said, you know what, we're one year or so away from opening a new stadium and we've just signed a 22-year old attacking midfielder whose going to orchestrate our attack for years to come and we're going to go crazy young this year, bloody our kids, see what we've got, so next off season when we've finally got some money and we know what we really need we'll know where to spend it, so we're going to go with: ------------------Hamid------------------ DeLeon - Robinson - Birnbaum - Kemp ------------------Durkin------------------ Sam-----Harkes-----Acosta-----Nyarko ------------------Mullins----------------- I could totally live with this. Only guys over 26 would be the two wings, right? You'd also have Jeffrey and Buescher as part of the U-26 club...
Durkin and Robinson are not better than their counterparts though, Harkes/Jeffrey might be a toss up. In this league, this season, DCU absolutely has a chance to win MLS Cup this season; no reason to throw it away. If things aren't going well then sure, but I just don't see it happening for the hell of it
There is no one size fits all philosophy. Every player is different. Some players you have to bring along slowly. Some players will benefit if you throw them in the deep end of the pool on day 1. We'll never really know since we're not there in training every day to observe every little detail. This is why Ben gets paid the "big bucks" ... Having said that, when in doubt I'd always lean towards the younger player. Look at Pulisic. There was no shortage of older more experienced wingers on that team (Schurrle, Reus, Kagawa etc ...) But when he got his minutes, he seized his opportunity and grew. It's hard to grow sitting on the bench.
If you want the dynamic attack we saw last year in every match you need speed at center back. That attacking style requires our back line to push up high in order to keep control of the space behind our attack. Boswell got burned a lot over the top and there is a lot of speed in this league. Birnbaum should be able to organize. Franklin will need to adapt and I think he can. If he doesn't, the answer is not Boswell, it's mid-season transfer of a quality center back. I also believe we'll see Tissot on the bench just about any time he's not starting. To have a left sided player that can play in the midfield or the back is extremely valuable. Our formation is a 4-1-4-1 when we play defense, but its a 4-3-3 when we are in attack. Our outside midfielders become wingers in a hurry. That's why we will see nothing, but high caliber athletes in those spots going forward. Behind Acosta I think we have LeToux who can spell him quite well this season. I think a healthy Marcelo can play either the holding mid or the box-to-box spot. Holding mid will probably reduce the wear on his body but his skills are more suited to be close to the attack. Either way, he'll have to partner really well with the other midfielder in order to make sure nobody gets caught up field. Additionally, I've heard Olsen talk about playing the attack with full backs and having our defensive midfielder drop back into the center of the back line. None of Marcelo, Vincent, or Jeffrey have the wheels to do that. Little Harkes does though. So does Durkin. Using our fullbacks to provide width -- or even inverting a Nick DeLeon to help us own the midfield will be a great trick up our sleeve if we have a Ryan Nelsen (in his first year with the team) type at the D-mid spot who can slide down between Birnbaum and Franklin when our full backs get into the attack.
I have purchased MLSLive and for some reason I was able to get the black out games because... I don't know why. I think it's because Virginia considers my area 'rural' since our water comes from wells and we have no sewers. I do have a VPN service that I can use to 'trick' the system into thinking I'm not in the DC area just in case they catch on.
in the last pre-season game, he stepped on someone else's heel and actually got a yellow for it. He hurt himself and got treatment, but remained in the game unil after half time. They didn't say this was it but I would bet it is the reason.
Let me just say this game has given me the first real feeling of optimism in several months. Not that I'm projecting a win -- I can just focus on something else for the next 8 months, LOL.
Will the game be streamed on the news channel 8 website? Don't have cable and my antenna is hit or miss. If not, what station is the radio broadcast?
Last year they weren't streamed. I don't think they have the streaming rights. I didn't know that channel 8 is available with an antenna.
? Most home Saturday games are at 7. Certainly, given the weather, mid-day would have been better for attendance and comfort. But almost any other day in the past three weeks would have been fine. Sucks.
last year we had a bunch of early season 5PMs because they were on ABC as opposed to NC8, and so they had to be earlier to not ruin their primetime.
I can't remember DCU ever doing that for early season or late season games due to weather. Wouldn't be a bad idea in general, but maybe the timing is more important than the weather on balance and they're just unlucky tonight.
Very excited for the match. Eager to see Harkes and Ortiz. Not sure how I feel about Franklin as a CB. Boswell is our only defender on the bench. I can't remember if Vincent ever filled in at FB before.