rankprev.teampointsgameswinslossesdrawsgoals forgoals againstgoals diff. 11Seattle Reign FC46191414401525 22FC Kansas City3720115434268 33Portland Thorns FC302187637334 44Washington Spirit28208843139-8 55Chicago Red Stars282076724204 66Western New York Flash2420710333285 77Skyblue FC19194872134-13 87Houston Dash181851032030-10 99Boston Breakers141941323045-15 FC Kansas City projected roster: Goalkeepers: Nicole Barnhart, Sara Keane Defenders: Becky Saurbrunn, Nikki Phillips, Leigh Ann Robinson, Amy LePeilbet Midfielders: Lauren Holiday, Jen Buczkowski, Jenna Richmond, Frances Silva, Erika Tymrak, Katrina Gorry, Mandy Laddish Forwards: Liz Bogus, Amy Rodriguez, Morgan Marlborough, Sarah Hagen NWSL injury report: OUT: None DOUBTFUL: None QUESTIONABLE: None PROBABLE: Nicole Barnhart (right ankle sprain), Sarah Hagen (right ankle contusion) Washington Spirit projected roster: Goalkeepers: Ashlynn Harris, Chantal Jones Defenders: Toni Pressley, Robyn Gayle, Ali Krieger , Nikki Cross, Crystal Dunn, Bianca Sierra, Tori Huster, Alex Singer Midfielders: Yael Averbuch, Christine Nairn, Lori Lindsey, Diana Matheson, Veronica Perez, Jordan Angeli Forwards: Renae Cuellar, Jodie Taylor, Danesha Adams, Lisa DeVanna, Kerstin Garefrekes Caroline Miller, Colleen Williams and Tiffany Weimer are on injured reserve. NWSL injury report: OUT: Caroline Miller (right ankle surgery), Tiffany Weimer (left knee acl tear) DOUBTFUL: None QUESTIONABLE: Toni Pressley (right knee pcl tear) PROBABLE: None Projected Starting XI for FC Kansas City: (4-4-2, Box Midfield) Coach Andonovski really surprised us by coming out with a 4-4-2, but in a diamond midfield with just Buczkowski as the lone holding mid and brought in Katrina Gorry as another attacking midfielder. I think after her performance last match, where she floated on defense and gave up 2 bad turn overs in her own end, and one inside her own box which lead to the lone Skyblue goal. I seriously doubt she will start this game. So back to the box midfield hopefully with Jenna Richmond getting her starting job back. Projected starting XI for the Washington Spirit: (4-4-2, Diamond Midfield) One surprise to this starting line up is where is Jodie Taylor? She has been called up to her first national team call up to the English national team. Congratulations to her, well deserved. There is a possibility of having Yael Averbuch start over Lori Lindsey but Averbuch has not been good in possession and Lindsey provides just more ball possession with her in the line up. Match Overview: This is the 3rd match and last one for Kansas City and the Washington Spirit. Currently the series is tied 1-1 so this is a good opportunity for the Blues to put their stamp on this match and potentially do some serious damage to the Washington play off chances. The Spirit on the other hand have a tall road ahead of them without their talisman scorer in Jodie Taylor who is tied with 3 other players for second in league scoring with 11 goals. An impressive amount of goals for a side that doesn't normally score that many. But this year has been a marked turn around for the Spirit. They have scored more then enough goals to win matches but have allowed 8 more goals then they have scored which has put them in trouble. They are still 4th in the league standings despite this. Kansas City on the other hand decided to experiment with a 4-4-2 diamond midfield and again got exposed several times. Several bad turn overs in their end, put immense pressure on the back line to defend the counters that were generated. One of them resulting in a goal. I can understand the thinking of going with a diamond midfield, but Andonovski has to understand taking your best defensive player in Jenna Richmond out does create a lot of problems. Richmond excels and keeping the ball while under pressure while Buczkowski will try to pass it away when she is pressured. Under those situations, the ball stays in the Blues defensive zone and in some cases a turn over is the result. With Richmond, she can hold, drive forward with the ball and get the ball out to a midfielder that is ready to carry the ball forward into the attacking zone. And this is why Richmond is so much more important in the ball possession department then Buczkowski. Buczkowski is a good defensive midfielder, but not a ball possession player. She simply is not good enough with the ball at her feet. If Andonovski wants to play in a diamond midfield, keep Richmond in the line up, she is very needed back there is build possession so Lauren Holiday doesn't have to go deep in our end to pick up balls, which she was constantly doing. She was doing Richmond's role. Holiday was constantly trying to start from the back to build up, she needs to stay up higher and have one of our holding mids bring the ball to her and link with her. But Buczkowski doesn't do this well, and Holiday knows this, she was falling deep into the Blues end to take balls. My hope is that we stay with 2 holding mids, but Andonovski has gone back to the 4-4-2 when Hagen joined the team and now he is going back to the diamond midfield. Hopefully if he insists on going with the diamond, he would be willing to try Richmond there and also use Frances Silva at right win instead of Gorry. Gorry simply cannot be a starter. In an Andonovski system, all the midfielders have to back mark and defend. The system demands that they clog the middle of the pitch up and force turn overs there. This means all the midfielders have to be in passing lanes and man marking the forwards to cut off passes to them. The center backs play a big role in doing this. But Gorry is a big time floater, she was leaving too many gaps in the coverage and her constant turn overs were costly. For Kansas City this match pretty much clinches a play off spot if they can win and nearly clinches home field advantage. There just simply not enough matches for Portland to catch up to the Blues to pass them.
No Amy Rodriguez in the starting 11. Bogus in the Starting 11. The big question is, what's the formation? Blues starting XI: Barnhart, Robinson, Sauerbrunn, Phillips, Kallman, Richmond, Buczkowski, Holiday, Bogus, Silva, Hagaen. #WASHvFCKC— FC Kansas City (@FCKansasCity) July 30, 2014
Becky Sauerbrunn scores her first professional goal in her history. Great through ball by Hagen to see Sauerbrunn's run.
27' Garefrekes hits the post after 2 Blues players collide as they try to mark her freeing her for that shot
36' Silva back marking Singer who gets a nice feed into the box but Silva beats Singer to the ball and knocks it away
37' Buczkowski trying to carry the ball in her zone losses it in a tackle and a turn over in her zone. Buczkowski weakness is coming through. She is not good at carrying the ball especially under pressure.
42' nice 1-2 with Buczkowski. Silva would receive the pass from Buczkowski and one time a chip that would get to her into the box but Harris would come off her line to prevent the shot.
Half time -FCKC look to be in a 4-2-3-1 formation -Liz Bogus is playing the left side, replacing Tymrak, other then that, Bogus has been back marking but in the build up, she really is useless connecting with Holiday. -Silva gets the start and is on the right wing -Rodriguez isn't starting and Hagen is at top -Hagen with a beauty of a through ball after a 1-2 build up with Sauerbrunn who would charge up the field and continue her run towards the box. Sauerbrunn would fire a shot that would beat Harris far post. 18' was the goal -Silva has been back marking very well and playing off with players when she gets the chance -FCKC is sitting back more deeper this match. Washington is being allowed to keep possession in after the half way mark,
Bogus has collided with Holiday twice in the first half, and again with Kallman that lead to the shot that hit the post from Garefrekes.
49' Wow Garefrekes heads in a goal after the ball was knocked out but the Spirit don't give up on it. I think that caught the Blues off guard off the corner kick.
67' Nairn scores for Washington, they were doing a replay while this happened, but I Nairn got a nice pass inside the box, not sure who was supposed to mark her.
73' why does Rodriguez back pass it right outside the box, hold it!, back pass right back to Gorry and it gets intercepted. Hold the damn ball up
FC Kansas City 1-2 Washington Spirit FCKC goals: 18' Becky Sauerbrunn (1st) assisted Sarah Hagen (1st) Washington goals: 49' Kerstin Garefrekes (1st) assisted Lisa DeVanna (2nd), 67' Christine Nairn (5th) assisted Lisa DeVanna (3rd) FCKC Substitutions: 45' Erika Tymrak (Liz Bogus), 45' Katrina Gorry (Frances Silva), 58' Amy Rodriguez (Sarah Hagen) Washington Substitutions: 45' Lisa DeVanna (Danesha Adams), 74' Yael Averbuch (Lori Lindsey), 88' Jordan Angeli (Christine Nairn) Starting XI for FC Kansas City: 4-2-3-1 -----------------------------------Sarah Hagen --------------------Liz Bogus---Lauren Holiday---Frances Silva ----------------------Jenn Buczkowski---Jenna Richmond Kassey Kallman---Nikki Phillips--Becky Sauerbrunn---Leigh Ann Robinson Starting XI for the Washington Spirit: 4-4-2 (Diamond Midfield) -----------Danesha Adams---Kerstin Garefrekes ----------------------Diana Matheson --------------Crystal Dunn---Christine Nairn -------------------------Lori Lindsey Alex Singer---Nikki Cross--Tori Huster---Ali Krieger One of those Dr. Jekell and Mr.Hyde halves. FC Kansas City would have a slight lead in possession in the first half and would take the lead with a beautiful build up play with Becky Sauerbrunn intercepting the ball in her side of the half, charging up the field, forward passing to Sarah Hagen and Sauerbrunn would continue her run forward and Hagen seeing this, would hold the ball up and wait until she breaks before sending a through ball to a running Sauerbrunn into the box. Ashlynn Harris would be caught of her line and Sauerbrunn would chip her hitting the far net scoring for the Blues. I believe this is Sauerbrunn's first ever professional goal. So congrats to her. The second half was a different story. The Blues would sub Frances Silva and Liz Bogus off and bring in Erika Tymrak and Katrina Gorry and things began to break down. There were a lot of turn overs, attempted long balls forward by Phillips which resulted in more turn overs. Gorry was constantly getting bodied off the ball and turning the ball over in the attacking zone and even Holiday was turning the ball over with many of her passes. This caused the Blues to sit very deep in their defensive side and soak up attack after attack into their zone as Washington would start building most of the possession in the second half. The story for Washington was the substitution of Lisa DeVanna into the game. Danesha Adams was pretty invisible out there but DeVanna changed all that and was constantly trying to attack the box and hold the ball up and wait for numbers. The first goal was probably a marking mistake by the Blues. A free kick went in by the Spirit and it was knocked back out but the Spirit were able to recover it and DeVanna would chip the ball back in and Garefrekes with her height would head the ball into the net. Catching everyone off guard. The Blues looked unprepared for the service into the box. The second goal, I really don't know what happened there since they were showing a replay but Christine Nairn would get a pass from DeVanna and strike the ball beating Barnhart inside the box. Somewhere there was a marking mistaking because she is fairly open for that shot. The Blues were constantly trying to long ball or just go direct trying to beat the defender after that and not succeeding. The offense did not play with the ball well, too many bad passes, surprisingly from Holiday but also from Gorry as well. And I should talk about the 4-2-3-1 formation. Andonovski switched his formation again, so its going to be hard to predict what formation the Blues come out on any given day. Simply put Bogus should not ever start, maybe he wanted to give Tymrak some rest since she might be banged up. But after the first half, the Blues ball possession collapsed and that has to be worrying. Tough loss for the Blues since they don't clinch a play off spot yet. Take Aways from the match: Lauren Holiday: Had a rough day, did a fair bit of defending because the Blues were constantly have to recover from turn overs and had to deal with the possession that Washington had but Holiday also turned the ball over quite a bit with her passes which were getting intercepted. Liz Bogus: She back marked and was defending deep, but she did collide with Kassey Kallman which freed up Garefrekes an open look for goal inside the box, her shot would hit the post bouncing out. Bogus just wasn't good in building up and made several mistakes in her marks, like colliding with Kallman. Jenn Buczkowski: Had another bad game. Just too many turn overs in her own half again. None that created a very dangerous chance for Washington, but these turn overs are when she is trying to carry the ball forward and she gets tackled. Instead of shedding those tackles off, she losses the ball. Not very good at holding and shielding the ball to protect it. Nikki Phillips: Looked good, with Sauerbrunn, they did quite a bit of man marking and Phillips despite her problems with DeVanna's speed, was able to knock her down a couple times without taking any fouls. She probably should of picked up a yellow since she body tackled DeVanna late in the second half, but she got away with it. Katrina Gorry: I understand that Andonovski wants to find a role for her since they got her as a free agent. But she is too small for this league. The Spirit players were simply using their bodies to knock her off the ball and there is nothing she can do about it. She was constantly falling on the ground, when she gets tackled and then a turn over is the result. NWSL is a very physical league, I really don't see her working well here.
I think Gorry's problem is not so much the fact that she's small, it's that she hasn't had the years to adjust to the physicality of the US style of play that other smaller players have had. Players like Matheson, Dunn, and Spencer grew up playing that style and were able to adapt to it over the years. Gorry didn't, and it's showing.