First of a two game road trip. We are without national team call ups Zusi, Besler, Feilhaber, Saad, Oliveira, and Musa. We need to find points somewhere if we're going to avoid the dreaded wildcard road game. This is the easiest place to do it outside the home game to Houston.
Making my second trip to Minnesota this year. Hope the team play's much better. More optimistic with a back line of Ike, EPB, SAS and Seth, and Soony not on the front line, as compared to the line-up we started on May 7.
Ike has an interview on the site from today (10/3) and is talking about what he expects from the game this weekend. I assumed he would be hurting, but he didn't bring it up and wasn't asked about it, and talked very much as if he plans to play.
This really sucks. I’m traveling the entire month and will miss all four of the final league games because they are only available on mls live.
I was looking at the site the other day and they were offering a rest of the season package for something like $10. It isn't ideal, but you can watch on a laptop or your phone.
So, with our many absenses, we still put out a strong lineup. We still have the same issue up top, three of Gerso, Blessing, Rubio and Salloi. Medranda can deputize for Benny. EPB is quite good, and SAS is a very serviceable right back, if not anywhere close to Zusi right now.
Oh wow...Callum Williams is the Minnesota announcer (doing the MLS live broadcast tonight as well since they generally use the home team's crew).
Probably should have won that one. Hope Melia is okay (they called it a cramp after the game, which I think is a good sign). A draw puts us in 2nd place with a game in hand. Not the best slate of games to work with, though.
another failure in the final 10 minutes. feels like a hallmark of the vermes era. two more points thrown away. incredible save on that espinoza header in the stoppage time, though.
Leaving points on the table, it's what we do. Looking at the table, we appear to have effectively locked up a playoff spot. RSL and SJE are not making up those goal differentials.
First tie breaker is wins, not goal difference. If we lose out and San Jose and RSL win out, they'd both have 14 wins to our 12 and would win that tiebreaker.
On the goal, a lot happened and I don't put it on Opara, but something we've seen from him lately looked to be in pretty clear focus on that play, he's lost his hops. He hasn't been getting up like he used to. What he used to do was almost unbelievable, but is he shying away from skywalking since the concussion? Is he maybe protecting himself a bit? His leap looked, well, better than mine, but very average. On Melia, was whatever the injury was turf related? There were a lot of folks getting stuck in that crap last night. And we had way too many balls roll all the way across the goal mouth to end up with only one. the way we controlled extra time left me a bit miffed, as we were apparently following a game plan to protect a lead until they scored. because we wanted the ball they couldn't handle us
Actually, MLS has had total wins as the first tiebreaker since 2013. Before that, it was goals scored.
man I hope Melia doesn't have anything serious, Zendejas did not look MLS ready at all. Did he have one pass that went to an SKC player?
That wasn't Zendejas who replaced him, that was Dykstra, he's been in the league off and on since 2009.
But I would suggest it's been a stupid rule since then. Either points count, or they don't. GD to me is a better indicator of overall quality. Of course, I'm mostly saying this because that puts us out ahead of the mob.
Yep. I wrote a scathing email to Extra Time Radio when the league changed the rule and had a short back and forth with the Borg about it. Makes no sense whatsoever. Points, goal differential, goals for. It's not difficult. The very first thing teams should have incentive for doing (besides just getting results) is scoring more goals because that makes your overall product more entertaining. This just reeks of a decision where MLS could be different just for the sake of being different. It annoys the hell out of me and I'm in a constant state of wanting it changed to the way it should be.
I put it on EPB. He stopped dead and ball watched. You could see Ike looking at him afterward as if to say, "where were you?" Also, Tim's "injury" or cramp happened on the play before when he came off his line to try to punch the ball. He was limping as he went for his water bottle before the next play.