Atlanta United FC vs Colorado Rapids Mercedes Benz Stadium, Atlanta 4/27/19, 6:00 PM Fox Sports Southeast MLSsoccer.com preview here. AJC.com United page here. This one is really simple folks: Colorado has the worst record in the league, is winless on the road, and has surrendered 23 goals in just 8 games. If ever there was a game set up to allow Atlanta to break out of their scoring funk it's this one. Colorado has some MLS veterans and they can score, averaging over a goal per game, but they're not a fast team and they're not a cohesive unit defensively. GK Tim Howard is already in the twilight of his career and it doesn't help that he has comparably little talent to work with in front of him. Former New Zealand head coach Anthony Hudson is looking in-over-his-head in managing the day-to-day aspects of a professional club, likely not aided by the financial realities for the Rapids. The result was a next-to-last finish last year and a start to 2019 that suggests they still don't have the answer. For Atlanta the question for matchday concerns the lineup - How aggressive do you want to go in attack and do you bring back a player like Escobar or Remedi or buy them more time to recover? The former determines if you try to fit all 4 of Josef, Pity, Tito, and Barco on the pitch at the same time, the latter tells you if you're playing 3 or 4 at the back. Now that we know FdB isn't fixed to a 4-3-3 perhaps the side's progressive performances will inspire something even more dramatic for Saturday? The only caution against that would be do you risk an anxious crowd and/or do you try something knowing it might only work for one game? I don't want to say it's now or never, buuut... 3-1. Crowd gets cheap burritos while debating the ending of Endgame on Sunday.
I am all in for cheap burritos.... but Moe's Monday is win or lose $5.99. No way we don't get 3 points tomorrow. The question is do we do it style and spank the Rapids or do we make everyone sit on pins anGd needles? The key is to score first. Had we done that against Dallas the game would have been different and we'd have won. If FdB can get LGP's head out of his ass we should be fine. He has been horrible so far (my wife still loves him, but I am guessing that is more on looks than his defensive skills).
Moe's Monday is fair but I prefer the dollar off for each goal when Atlanta should be scoring 3 or 4.
Do not, under any circumstances, give up the early goal. It's Colorado. A tie isn't going to cut it. If Atlanta doesn't win today, the mood after the game will not be pretty.
The Rapids didn't park the bus, they brought in 2 of those London double deckers and parked them behind a dump truck and the actual team bus.
Both FdB and the radio guys after the show talked about how one team wasn't trying to play. And while they didn't just outright say it, they kind of gave the impression that the lesson was "well what can you do when a team comes in and plays like that?" The team won. That's good. They still had way too difficult of a time scoring goals against the worst team in the league. Yes, playing against a team that has no intention of trying to score a goal all game makes the opposing third very difficult and hard to score against. Yes, we wish teams would try to come in to Atlanta and play more of an open, attacking game. Well, newsflash fellas: this ain't going to go away any time soon. Until you figure out how to score goals against it, teams are going to continue to bunker in MBS. Stop complaining about it. Figure it out already.
Not sure if your comment about complaining was directed at me, but I do think there is a lot of truth in the complaints. Greece won the Euros with this kind of anti-football. Dallas beat us with it, Colorado lost. This season is so FUBAR'ed. Draws with teams we should out class and a couple real tests played in tsunamis. We've got a couple of games in hand and, as you say, if we can actually score a goal early our fortunes should change.
Well I'm not the concerned about the coach. Bunkering is a legit strategy and the way to beat it is to score a goal. It gets more and more frustrating as the game goes deeper and deeper, but if a team is only concerned with not conceding then what are you going to do? Pity was ineffective and FdB made a double switch. It paid off 3 minutes later, so I don't understand why complaints are unwarranted.
Mean while the teams ahead of us are dropping points left and right. When we get this sorted out we should be fine.
Happy with the win, not thinking of it as a corner we've turned or anything. Colorado is the worst team in the league, and we are supposed to beat those teams.