My random thoughts: The difference with and without koffie was astounding. We were firing on all cylinders, then he went down and we couldn't string together passes the rest of the game. Sambinha looked pretty good the first half then pooped his pants in the 2nd. That flub on Castillo's goal was pathetic. Kamara missed 2 clear cut headers. I think he'll make those more often than not. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Total defensive breakdown. Sambinha looked very poor, which was highlighted for all to see on the critical third goal. Was excited to see him, but he lacked confidence on basic possession and was easily unsettled by FCD's high press. Tough opponent and first start jitters are certainly at play, but we saw why Heaps was reluctant to put him in. Really thought we were in control after Lee's PK, but the combo of FCD upping their possession play and losing Koffie was a killer. As well as Rowe plays on the wings, we lose a little bite and ground covering ability when he's at CM. Juan's rich vein of form continues, it's good to see he and Kamara able to play well together. FCD marked Kei well and found a way to limit Lee with Zimmerman and Ulloa. I think having young talents able to step up like that made the difference tonight.
Dallas lost one of their best attackers, Barrios, and still scored 3 more goals. We lost Koffie and crumbled. Heal up Kouassi! Despite the result I had a great time at the game. Tried to get Fort tickets but it was sold out. The Morgue is no longer really the Morgue, there was a bit of atmosphere in section 106 despite being surrounded by toddlers and pre-teens.
My thoughts after watching the game. The Revs are a team with a bunch of B & C players. Are they bad, no; but they are not great. Most teams would be very happy with any of the Revs players on their team. The Revs have no one that can help carry a team. We are full of good support players. We need a couple of A players if we ever think we are going to compete for titles in the MLS. Lee had an "A" year in 2014 and with the addition of JJ, we went to the Cup Final. But then, with the loss of JJ, teams started to mark Lee out of the game and that went away. Kia, in theory, should be an A player; but I think he's an A- at best. Maybe with the addition of Kouassi things will change. Nobody seems to know what to expect from him. Oh well, the expectations for the team this year were not that high, so I guess I won't expect to beat those expectation. Maybe we can at least match them.
So, Seattle at home, and then three tough road games. Boys and girls, a month from now, our season could be effectively over.
Dallas is a really good team. You need to be firing on all cylinders to beat a team of their caliber. Unfortunately the Revs were not. Seemed like the whole complexion of the game changed once Koffie went down. The Revs were controlling the game up until that point, then it was basically all Dallas from then on. Even though the Dallas goals came off of seemingly preventable mistakes, it did feel like only a matter of time before Dallas took the lead based on the flow of the 2nd half. I feel bad for Samba - I thought he was having a solid outing until he gave that gift goal to Castillo. Hopefully he can bounce back from that - especially if JoGo is going to be out any longer. The way the Revs looked tonight without Koffie, here's hoping he isn't shelved for too long either. Losing to Dallas in a vacuum isn't bad (they might be the best team in MLS) - but only winning 2 in 13 is. Next week against a struggling Seattle team flying across the country to Foxboro feels like a must win. They've only scored 10 goals through 11 games (only Chicago's offense has been worse), and like the Revs, have 13 points (4-6-1). If the Revs defense can't hold them at bay, then they're in trouble. The crazy thing is, thanks to the East being awful, the Revs are still somehow only 5 points back of 1st and 3 points back of a cluster of teams that are tied for 3rd. And DOOP is the only team in the East that has more wins than losses. Thanks to the conference being bad, and with plenty of games remaining against the teams ahead of them, there's still time to right the ship and get in a good position, though it does feel like that time is ticking...
With Dempsey out, I think Seattle is close to a must win, at least as much as one can be at this point in the season. Granted the East is god awful but this needs to be more about just squeaking into the 6th spot in the playoffs. The fact that we are only 3 points ahead of wretched Chicago and knowing Chicago has 2 games in hand on the Revs should scare us.
The East is awful but be careful just looking at points. 7 of the 10 teams in the conference have played less games than the Revs. And no one in conference has played more games than the Revs. 4 teams have 2 full games in hand on the Revs. On a points per game basis, the Revs are tied for second to last.
Yes I know their PPG isn't good but my point is if you start winning games, especially against the teams ahead of you in points and PPG, you can make that up and there's a good amount of time to do so. They've still got about 2/3 of the season left and nobody is really out of striking distance. But they obviously have to start winning games if they want to keep themselves in the hunt. They're lucky that everyone else in the East has been dropping points left and right, or else they might be effectively out of it by now. Speaking of points per game, the Revs finished with 1.47 points per game last year and finished in 5th. That would be good for 2nd in the East so far this year. Actually, going by points per game, only Philadelphia is on a pace that would have finished above the red line in the East last year.
To get to last year's point total, we now need to get to 1.76 PPG. This should be fun. 2 wins in 13 games. 6 games where they've given up at least 3 goals. Sambinha didn't look bad, but wasn't anywhere close to perfect either. I don't understand why he was started, but then again, I don't understand most of what Heaps does anymore. As I noted after the Fire game, yes, we won, but we were one red-card away from being in serious danger in that game. Sorry, this team isn't average ... this team is aspires to be that.
Agreed --- nice team, just not a team that will compete for a championship. We will compete for a playoff spot, but that is hardly big news.
We all dream of a team of Jay Heaps! A team of Jay Heaps! A team of Jay Heaps! We all dream of a... Oh wait. We have that.
And Kraft makes his money and he's all happy and everything is right with the world. (Excepting the disgruntled passionate fans.)
I don't think it was poor judgement (i.e., decision-making) as much as it was mis-judging the flight of the ball. You don't get that sense on TV, but from midfield you could see that he was off-balance and wasn't able to get under it (if he had, he could have cleared it, headed it back to Shuttleworth, ..., a bunch of options). I think, unfortunately, it's the type of thing that happens when you haven't been playing regularly. If you throw in a guy who hasn't played all season, you're going to have to live with some mistakes. It's a shame, IMO. I think he played quite well up until that point. And, it was one more poor/failed clearance by Farrell that left Samba so exposed. I wouldn't assume that. I don't. They've made plenty of moves to make this team a contender - I think they expect better results. They don't fire coaches willy-nilly, but this isn't a whole lot different than the situation where Clavijo got canned (other than no Steve Nicol on the bench). I was very, very impressed with Dallas - they kept our back line under pressure the whole game - and they exploited an inexperienced and untested central defense effectively. I thought Akindele was outstanding, among others. Yet, still, the Revs fought back and were bossing the game at 2-1. The injury to Koffee certainly changed a lot. Heaps was ready with his "Rowe-utility-knife", but while Rowe can play dmid, he doesn't have the necessary authority to control the position and derail atttacks. Heaps is going to have to come up with another solution there - and quick. Rowe is not going to be the answer. The 2nd Dallas goal, tying it at 2-2 was a tough one. Caldwell's defense wasn't bad, but when a guy can power a header on target while moving away from goal, you have to tip your hat to him. Shuttleworth got a hand on it, and he's probably thinking he should have kept it out - but it's a reaction play, you react as best you can. Would some other goalkeepers have saved it? Sure, some would have, some wouldn't. Shuttleworth was pretty rash on the pk challenge. Obviously he has to make a quick and decisive decision, but it looked like he could have tried to slow the play and let Farrell get back into it. But, bottom-line for me is that Farrell got burnt big time and left BS having to make a risky, split-second decision. Looking at the goals given up, it seemed like Farrell had some major fault in 3/4 of them. Totally burnt by the long pass on the first goal, bad giveaway leaving Samba exposed on the 3rd and inexplicably abandoned the middle channel on the 4th goal. The most frustrating thing with our defensive breakdowns is that it seems to be a different player every week: Farrell this one, Watson last game, Woodbury the one before that, ... I'm really baffled by Farrell - he's just too mistake-prone for a player of his ability/position/age. This wasn't the first game where he was primarily responsible for multiple goals (IMO) and that's not acceptable. Either he needs to move to a new position, or he needs better coaching. The other thing I haven't seen mentioned is the refereeing. While Petrescu didn't make any major mistakes and generally called the fouls that were there, I thought he let Dallas get away with way too much persistent fouling. The fouls were 18 to 9: that's a lot of fouls without a single card for persistent or intentionally fouling (FCD got one yellow in the first half for a rough foul and another late in the game). But, there were many, many fouls that had no intention of winning the ball - perfect example, the play where Koffee was injured - just stopping the Revs' momentum. That was an effective tactic and Petrescu shouldn't have allowed it to continue.
It's gonna be huuuuge: Armchair Analyst: RBNY deliver a beating for the ages & more from Week 12 May 23, 2016, 1:06 AM EDT Matthew Doyle
In the west, I would agree. However, the East sucks just enough that the revs could go on a ridiculous run and sneak in.
That game was obviously disappointing, and it's still coming back to a lack of leadership in the back. Someone said that Kei was nowhere to be seen, but I disagree, I was watching his movement, he is constantly moving around, moving away to set up runs back into the middle, and while the team is looking for him, they're not finding him. I do think that, as predicted/expected, his mere presence is opening up more space for others. I was sort of torn on who took the PK, on the one hand, I'd like to have seen him take it, to get his first goal for the team, since as we know getting goals can give forwards more confidence, as seems to be the case with Juan since he scored his first of the season, and also I feel like I'd trust him more as the PK guy rather than Lee, but on the other hand, with his issues at previous teams, it's also a good thing to let him know this team isn't all about him, he has to fit in to the existing team. As for Juan, great to see him score again, I believe that's 4 games in a row with a goal or assist, though he also just plain missed a free header, which would have put us up 3-2 I believe. I think our offense will be fine, but the coaching staff needs to deal with the other giant issue, getting a solid defense. Farrell to me is a big concern, he's always been mistake prone, and while it's never good at any position in the back, it's even worse for a CB than it is for an outside back. That fourth goal may not have mattered much, but it was simply baffling. He was on the guy who received the ball as a target player, turned as the ball got touched back, and then played behind Farrell, Samba stepped over to pick that guy up, Farrell also decided to sort of step towards the guy with the ball even though he was in no position to do so, he saw Samba and Rowe were already there, so he inexplicably just went for a wander out to our left, completely forgetting about the guy he had just been on, who walked into the middle unmarked, received the ball and shot long before Watson could leave his mark to come across to pick up the guy Farrell had just let go. We hear the team refer to him as a "natural" centerback, but I just don't see natural instincts for the position. Though one other aspect of the goal, which is unsurprising from a midfielder who's not used to playing in the back, I think Rowe didn't hold the line, and followed his run behind the line set by the rest of the backs, giving the guy a bit more space when he received the ball than he might have had had Rowe held the line. But hey, he's our talisman, at least in Heaps' mind it appears, the guy has to be on the field, even if it's in a spot he's not familiar with. What you describe there is exactly why it was a poor decision. He tried to go for a home run ball, rather than play it safe. He needs to understand what he can and can't do, that he's the last guy back, and if he's off balance, and hasn't played a lot, such that his timing may not be spot on, he needs to make the safe play, not the flashy one. That said, I did like his defense, I thought he did well enough there for a first start. His distribution when he stepped forward was a little suspect, but I want my guys in the back to be defenders first, not midfield distributors. The goal by Caldwell was also a poor decision. First off, as people always say with keepers, they shouldn't come off their line unless they know they'll get the ball, he tried to jump across in front of the forward to head the ball away, didn't get there, and the guy had a bit of a free header. Had he tried to jump with the guy, just to disrupt him, he probably would have done better. Though the poorer decision was leaving Caldwell to pick the guy up. Scott does some things very well, but physicality is not one of them. Samba was on the guy to start, and Kamara was covering the dangerous space at the near post, perhaps either Kamara should have been on the guy, or Samba should have stayed with him. I don't know if that's a breakdown in preparation before the game, or by the players when they set things up, but I'd think that kind of thing should have been talked about and sorted out at some point before the kick is taken. For me, it just comes back to leadership, we seem to play like a rudderless ship at times, and when that's the case, it's really going to show in back. Our offense hasn't been bad in terms of creating chances at least, and putting them away should improve now, but we simply won't go anywhere if we continue to lead the league in goals allowed (which is not the kind of leadership I'm looking for from our defense).
That's hilarious! Even though I can't understand a word, you knew it was all over once the orange guy messed up. We are the guy in red--you just know it's gonna happen, no matter how hard you try to get it right!