I heard that. Seriously, the team looked like they were trying to run out the clock for 4o minutes, except that they were crappy at it. Could have been 5-1 final, and not for us, so a point is good. Opare and Kemp both looked un-solid. They ran both wings and down the center. Hard to imagine how that amount of firepower (on Montreal) couldn't put something else in. Vincent scoring would have made me much happier. Still, this is a good point to take, especially with subs in. Kemp is scaring me.
News channel 8 wouldn't work for me, the only channel out of 500+. Oh well. Good point, but not much changes. Still have to beat Chicago this weekend. Oh, and Orlando and Columbus lost, that's excellent.
Neagle wasn't totally at fault for the goal. Sarvas should have cleared instead of passing Neagle the ball with a Montreal player so close. That's a tough spot to put someone in for no real purpose. I can see why Olsen likes Vincent - he has some skill. But I wasn't paying attention to how he was doing on defense.
I totally don't understand Ben's sub strategy for this game. First of all I'm not a fan of reshuffling a defense. It's not like we're playing multiple competitions. I'd expect Boswell and Kemp to be ready to go. And if you absolutely must rest defenders, just rest them. I don't understand why Franklin starts if he's only 45 minutes fit. Just test De Leon in that position or something ... Subbing a defender at halftime by design is asinine, especially since Kemp looked completely lost once he came on. There's a reason most coaches don't reshuffle a defense at halftime especially when they're pitching a shutout. The other move I didn't understand is sitting Mullins. He doesn't have a lot of miles on his legs this season so he should be able to manage a 60 minute shift. I'm also not a big fan of resting goalscorers just as they're starting to find a scoring rhythm. I'd rather have Igbo off the bench to run at tired defenders late in the game. Acosta too is a young spark plug .... if you manage his minutes he should be able to contribute in all 3 games. If your plan all along is to use a sub at halftime, why not use it by bringing Acosta?
Well, I'll gladly eat crow that we got out of there with a point (wow, did MTL look ... bad). One more game like that and Hamid won't be allowed into Canada ever again. We may have technically gotten more shots than the 1-0 robbery from last year, but I think we barely created more scoring chances. Gotta give Vincent credit for his shot from outside the area in the second half, though -- it didn't really challenge their GK too much, but at least it stayed out of the stands (looking your way, NDL). It's too early to say anything for sure, but I'm not sure I see Kennedy on this team next season. This point is all for naught if we lose or tie with Chicago on Saturday.
No, but they might be tired. Not sure who they played in their last two games, but it's certainly possible they'll have to rest some guys. We probably won't have to rest anyone that we'd normally start. But yes, they aren't the crap team they were earlier in the season.
Kemp was uncharacteristically poor and Mishu was just awful. I know the plan was to take out Franklin at the half but given the circumstances, Olsen should have changed the plan. It's easy to wonder how the game would have been different if Franklin had played the 2nd half. Anyway, DC has become masterful at pulling out the road draw this season. If only their home record wasn't terrible.
What about Mishu did you not like? I thought he was pretty decent in the first half, and not terrible in the second.
Absolutely agree, I personally didn't blame Neagle at all. The moment Sarvas got the ball I was yelling for him to boot it, the moment he passed it I knew he put Neagle in a very bad spot and we were in trouble. Poor judgement by Sarvas there he should've known better.
Kemp will still go to ground to challenge for a ball when he's got little to no defensive support behind him. I seriously don't think he's got the defensive tactical awareness for that position. He's got midfielder/wing brain. The formula to get around Kemp is to either wait until he overcommits to an attack and counter into his (now empty) space, or feign until he goes to ground and happily run past him. Yes, Mishu had a couple of instances where he was slow to keep up with the defensive line, leaving MTL players onside, but United was clearly trying to keep a high line most of the night, and MTL trying to test it. That's gonna happen a couple of times. Apart from those couple of errors, I thought he did fairly well. I was actually surprised we held them as well as we did...That was very much not our "possess and attack" lineup, , but they still generated a fair amount of pressure. Igboananike isn't bringing us a holding forward (thankfully) but one who is there to keep a backline honest and minimize their involvement in attacks. He did that fairly well, and had a few dangerous looks at goal, too. If Nyarko had made his second half run at the far post instead of central, bisecting Igbo's run and shot, it would have been a sure goal. However, we're still terrible at consistent far post runs. The PK I was 50/50 on. It's clear Neagle's run was impeded, but he pushed the ball too far ahead of himself, so I don't think it was recoverable anyway. It's one of those where I'll take it, but wouldn't have been bothered by a no call. However, I thought Opare's red was a bit harsh. Yes, he had studs exposed in the challenge, and they were higher than the ball, but he had almost no momentum and the attacking player was facing him and had time to minimize the contact. It was a solid yellow to be sure, but red? We saw harder challenges from behind last game that weren't even given a yellow. Outside of that, I think Opare did a fine job frustrating much of MTL's attack. All told, I'll take that point with a decidedly less than optimal lineup.
The team has had great improvement playing out of pressure using the triangles, and I can understand why Sarvas made the decision he did. He had either the option to just boot it upfield and immediately lose possession, or play to Neagle and try for more space to move forward a United attack. He opted for the latter, but Neagle didn't have any options other than boot it, with MTL's pressure. So give them some credit for aggression. I wish we were half so aggressive in the final third.
To me, the most disappointing moment was when Neagle failed to bury an unmarked header in the first half.
I could be totally wrong on this, but I think they have a strategy for holding on to a lead, but not the tactics to do it. Neagle was just the last in a series of DC United players to eschew the easier clearance and look for a riskier pass to try to retain possession. I don't know if the staff has been listening, but I feel like someone finally realized that you can do more than just play defense to hold a lead. Unfortunately, there was an awful lot of bad decision-making in terms of holding the ball or making dangerous passes in the defensive third. General Notes: Kemp would like to forget this night. He was abused routinely by at least three different players last night. Igboananike is impressing me least of DC's pick ups. I'm not prepared to call him Pajoy 2.0, because that's just mean, but I don't think he has the skill set to be a lone striker. I would have been prepared to accept a point at the start of the match, but this feels like a disappointment. It looked like Montreal really picked up the pace of play before they scored and DC simply could not handle it, which is disappointing because prior the 65th minute or so, I thought DC looked as likely to get a second as Montreal to equalize. Chicago also may be making progress on righting the ship and Saturday could be disappointingly interesting.
I was yelling at Sarvas for that pass before the rest of the play ... played itself out. I said something about it being more Sarvas' "fault" than Neagle's on twitter and @Cweedchop about took my head off (okay, he simply strongly disagreed with me). This team's players pass to players in worse positions than they are in all the time and it drives me nuts. Guy will have 5-10 yards in front of him and pass to a guy who's double-teamed way too many times. I thought we played rather well for 65 minutes, definitely much better than I thought we might after seeing the starting XI on twitter We played very similar to how the "starters" have played the last few games which might even indicate that we teach some sort of "system" in practices these days. Unfortunately this "reserve team" also played how the first team does when trying to protect a one-goal lead late in the game as well ....... I thought Mishu did great for how often he's played recently, ditto Buscher. I was less impressed with Vincent, especially his free kicks/corners. Opare did pretty well too until that awful touch that led to the brainfart he had trying to recover from it. Kemp and Sarvas do not seem to be comfortable as substitutes, they took a long long time to settle in and almost cost us all the points (I still posit Sarvas cost us the win, but that might have happened later anyway, who knows, we were under a lot of pressure the last 20-30 minutes). They were fine by the end of the game and Sarvas in particular cleared a few nice balls to interrupt some attacks. We do not defend back-post runs well - I'm guessing it's because a United player has never made one in practice
I blamed it more on Neagle, who played very lackadasical throughout the game. I felt he made a bad choice when he tried to dribble through the one player pressuring him. I can see why he has been warming the bench lately, his decisions have been questionable.
I don't mean to defend anything else Neagle did on the night (other than the well-taken penalty and this one play) because I agree he wasn't all that great He was double-teamed and had almost no options to get that ball up-field safely as I recall, and I didn't tape the game so that's the impression I'll die with
I agree with the substitutions. I think Sarvas had Drogba (remember he broke his nose last game 3 weeks ago) in the back of his mind. He also picked up a yellow as soon as he stepped on the field, probably caused him to be even more jittery. I understand Ben was trying to protect a lead, but I did not like him coming in, Drogba is a very big guy who can do a lot of damage when he wants to. And I agree with the back-post runs, what is up with that!?!
Unless you can either mount an effective offense or just hang onto the ball for awhile on your side of the field, you're going to wind up giving the other side a lot of chances to score. That's what really happened last night. In other words, our defense had to dodge too many bullets over the course of the second half.
Looking back on the game, wow, we were lucky to get a point. That said, outside of Acosta I felt that the team looked about the same -- more creativity than in recent years, more risk taking and more risk offered. We really need a MUCH better plan to defend a lead. The subbing seems bizarre to me. And yes, Kennedy seems to have some talent, but I can see why he really doesn't click. Doubt he stays on with us next year, though I'm willing to have my mind changed by a number of goals (to be clear, not own goals) from him. [After the year that shall not be mentioned when own goal had his golden boot year, I am more specific when I appeal to the soccer gods...]
The good news was that our "B" team starters did pretty well, quite well in some situations. A veteran (Neagle) was more responsible for the tie than the second-stringers. Actually, in the first half I thought we were taking it to them, despite Montreal's advantage in possession. Second half, they were running us ragged and were much more dangerous near the box. But then, everyone is more dangerous near the box than DC. Igbo wasn't bad, but he will face more scrutiny if we have to pay his very high salary next year. Kamara, when he returns, is a relative bargain. And what was wrong with Vincent's corners? They looked up to our usual standard.