Sacramento Republic FC (9 pts., 3-0-2 overall, 1-0-0 at home) v. Portland Timbers 2 (0 pts., 0-0-5 overall, 0-0-2 away) Saturday, 7:30 p.m. kick-off at the Murph Television: CW 31 Radio: KHTK 1140 Online: http://www.SacRepublicFC.com/matchday-guide Yup, you read that right. T2 has posted a big, fat goose egg. Five games, five one goal defeats. No trap game here. It's time to rebound with a solid win.
I expect nothing other than glorious triumph. The boys will be, finally, back home and the fans will be up for it.
Garbled audio. Garbled video. Guess it only goes to figure there'd be garbled play in the first half. I don't want SRFC to be the team that other teams break their bad streaks against.
A game of me beating my head against a wall. The good....... The restarts in the first half were refreshing. Especially the ball DTS served into the wall, and the three touch redirection play a few minutes later. The bad....... We gave up an average of 5" in height to their defenders. We did not win many headers from our crosses in the first half (I only remember 1 or 2 all game that were even on target), yet the coaching staff seemed to double down on the strategy of "up the side and cross" for the second half. That definition of insanity seems to apply here..... It may not be time to panic, but someone on that staff had better admit this team has some work to do to be one of the elite teams in this league, or its gonna be a very long season. Flame suit on.......lol
<rant> Dear SRFC Leadership: So this is the first home match in what, two weeks? And even though the lads may be feeling a bit down having come in losing two straight, you would think they'd be up for the challenge, yes? And you would think that the people putting on the show would have things tightened down and ready to go at the Murph, right? Well, we all saw what went down. I don't need to get into the particulars, save for one thing: Paul Buckle has now, for the last three matches, sacrificed any tactical advantage his side may have against his opponent and has, in turn, ceded that advantage over to the other side. In OKC, he abandoned vertical against a slower opponent and tried outside-in against a taller opponent from a narrow field. In SPR, he went back to vertical against a defensive corps who, to a man, was faster in footspeed than our forwards. And now, against T2, they were honking in prayer balls into a veritable god-damned forest. Furthermore, they were doing the crosses from the edge corner of the PA and in angle toward the GK, instead of carrying to the baseline and sending low ball across or angling away from the GK - particularly in the second half. That latter gripe suggests to me there is a conditioning issue with the team - and that just will not do. Now, that's not just the only shitshow that was going on with SRFC this fine evening. I hope those in attendance didn't get seizures from that flashing video board. End-line clocks? Not there, so no on-field reference for time. Those of us who were watching on TV got treated to 20 minutes of garbled nonsense courtesy of CW31 - and those of us who had the ability to sync up the TV feed with the radio broadcast were treated to Carmichael Dave actually trying to talk intelligently about footy - and failing miserably, while the play-by-play guy was checking the SRFC twitter feed for time references in the first half. You would think that some of the identified tech bugs would have been worked out in the two weeks since OCB was here. You would think that a bit of testing and preparation would have happened, but apparently they did not. But hey - the snazzy video advo boards on the touch line worked perfectly. So we have that going for us. Yes, I'm pissed, and here's why: SRFC is trying to make the move up to MLS, but last night's performance, from both a footy standpoint and a presentation standpoint, indicates to me this team is barely USL-ready. SRFC set the gold standard a couple of years ago, and it looks to me like the front office is living on its reputation and not making sure that all the details of the presentation - both on AND off the field - are first-rate in all respects. Because, boys and girls, right now they have to be. MLS is watching, and MLS has plenty of attractive bid cities from which to choose...and if Sacramento keeps fvcking up the way they did last night, we could see our MLS dreams cast even further into jeopardy. SRFC needs to be at its best, all the time, in all aspects, without excuse or remorse. If you lose the match, fine. Play well, I'm okay with the loss. Play like shyte, and I'm looking to the off-field stuff to make up for the shyte play on the field. When the shyte off the field matches the shyte on the field, I begin to wonder if SRFC is actually serious about its MLS aspirations. Beginning at about 8:00 pm last night, that is the first time I have ever entertained any doubt about whether SRFC was actually serious about its stated goal of MLS. I want it to work. I want MLS to be in Sacramento. This fanbase has shown more passion and love than most current MLS sides could even dream of possessing. It's time that SRFC start stepping up its game. The good news is, there's almost a month to get the off-field tech and media presentation issues worked out. The bad news is, they now have a dedicated fan who doubts they are serious about addressing the issues that need fixing. Do better, gents. </rant>
Summed up perfectly. Well said. You should forward this to SRFC....esp the non-tactical issues. I feel like they're on autopilot. I've been told that they're in re: MLS. Maybe this is just a holding pattern as they wait for the official announcement, and the Nagle regime transitions in.
It's worse than you think. Even those fancy advo boards had a couple of blackouts and had to be rebooted. Well, at least the apple-chicken sausage sandwiches delivered.....twice, lol.
I share the disappointment here. Scoreless in 3 games, that's horrible. I don't know what Buckle is thinking. Against a team with 6'4" defenders we start a guy who's a foot shorter than they are and our sole strategy seems to be cross after cross into the box. I could see after the first 10 minutes that wasn't going to work, but that's what we did all game! And no correction or change from Buckle. I just don't k ow what he was thinking. We have some different guys on the bench, time to see what they can do.