There's clearly something going on behind the scenes. When you have one CF healthy and he's not playing at all, I think it says everything about Yura. The few times he's been given, he looks completely out of it. It's frustrating when he's given 20 minutes, and is somehow moving with less energy than the people that have been out there for the previous 70. He clearly must be doing the same things in training, or else I feel like Petke would've at least been giving him consistent sub minutes. I'm guessing that Yura not playing is his own fault. I get being upset that you're not starting or getting more minutes, but that should mean you bust your ass in training, and show a positive attitude throughout it all. Give Petke a reason to bring you into the game.
And, he was given a lot of 20 minute stints to show he's got something. He's even gotten a goal here and there, but it never has felt like he was the Yura of old (for RSL) or even remotely the same person as the Yura of Europe.
I absolutely love Yura but he is a broken player right now. Such a shame. I don't know what the deal is but you would think that how RSL plays right now Yura could be amazing on a wing. Really hope he gets it together. For any team he plays for.
Interesting stat time: You'd expect a severe dip in stats given the man disadvantage for a majority of the game. In some areas, we definitely see this. However, it's not universal. Shots: we took 17 shots this game. Significantly lower than the SEA game. Pretty much exactly the same as VAN and POR. We put 8 shots on target. This is tied with our highest park in the last 4 games. We had 2 shots inside the 6, neither were the lone goal. Of course. The dip? Passing and possession. We completed just 283 passes in this game. Third lowest of the season. Lowest (by a good amount) of the Petke era. We completed 219 of those passes, which was also third worst but significantly better than the other two games. We only had 453 touches. That is the lowest of the season. This was the most obvious part of the game that I was able to watch. We didn't have the ball much, and when we did we didn't keep it for long. We still managed 13 key passes. And Rusnak, that glorious bastard, still had 5 which was the highest of any single player. However, we lost this category for the first time in awhile. We attempted 18 dribbles. Tied for second highest of the season. This makes sense as with one less player out there, guys had to try shit. We were only successful on 7 of these dribbles. Not our worst rate, but nothing special We were really poor in tackling and aerial battles in this one compared to other recent games. I didn't think of LA as a physical/big team. Likely this boils down to the lack of bodies. What was crazy to me was that we only had 7 turnovers and were dispossessed 5 times. These are crazy low numbers for this team. We were dispossessed 22 times against SEA. We committed 14 turnovers against SEA. This was our second best game in dispossession and best in turnovers.
The turnover and dispossessed numbers make sense when you consider the lower possession, passing, and touches numbers. When you don't have the ball very much you're not going to be turning it over much. Honestly that style suits this team more anyways, when the other team feels they have to be on the front foot all the time they are more prone to errors and thay opens the door for our attack to shine.
...and LA... I shut the radio off after the red card, figuring it was a write-off given LA's strong pressure and pretty good possession prior to the card. Once I got home with 20 min left, I put the game on the iPad. Nice end to the game. LA was faltering and I think they lost focus (and their s***) with the foul. Great to see Kyle not over-think it and just bury it in the net. Diop's reaction was a priceless "WTF just happened...".