P/I/P: Match 6, Revs @ CMB, 4/6, 7:30PM (ET) [R]

When did Castillo get injured? He was not on the injury report. Or not injured?

That lead to a Somi sighting on the bench - wow!

 

Optical illusion of the game: It looked to me like Gil was a third CB at certain moments....

...there were so many times he was ALL THE WAY at the back line restarting the attack. At times, he was passing it FORWARD (multiple times) to Caldwell at DM.

When the only player likely to be able to unlock a defense with a pass must frequently track back that deeply to start the offense - well, then, he's using his skills in the wrong third of the field.

But that's only one of the symptoms within the much larger "how disjointed the entire attack is" problem space.

 

As a by-the-way, here it is two days later, and it's still blacked out on Espn+. Maybe this can be seen as some kind of trigger warning.

 

thats weird! Usually all the MLS games get aggregated on ESPN+, because it replaced the MLS app. They took it off the NBC Sports Boston replay list

 

I actually asked the Revs about this on Twitter. They said that NBCSports Boston will have replays for only 24 hours after the match and that games will be blacked out on ESPN+ in perpetuity. It's a horrible deal for fans. I don't have NBCSN Boston on my DirectTV package, so I bought ESPN+ to watch Revs games, which worked last year. (Fortunately, my friend has Xfinity, so I have a work around.)
I'm 90% sure the Revs aren't getting paid to be on NBCSN Boston, but if they are it's some sort of shell game to give them more access to the Pats. As such, Revs management should either insist replays be available on the NBC Sports App for at least a week, or allow ESPN+ to show them (which I'd prefer, given the app's better functionality). There is no reason to make game replays completely unavailable after 24 hours.

 

What a depressing post.

1. After 25+ years the REVs still aren't getting legitimately paid (other than a Patriot shell game) for their local broadcasts.

2. Someone is trying to go to a league supported, PAID, website (ESPN+, $4.99/month, right?) to watch a game but can't get it. Yet the broadcast industry marvels at the amount of "piracy" (e.g. file sharing) that takes place...

3. There is nothing to pirate/share because we all hit delete after the game as fast as we could.

 

I made an unsubstantiated assumption, but given their popularity in the community I'd be shocked if they were being paid. At best it might be a shared cost arrangement.

 

I thought this was interesting. 3 expected goals models - one gave us more xG (1.07 to 0.67), one put it pretty even (0.93xG to 1.27xG for Columbus), and one gave us only 0.07 xG (which seems obviously incorrect).

Another reminder that xG models are different. Same game, 3 very different xG results. pic.twitter.com/Bcgmm1FBgI

— Eliot McKinley (@etmckinley) April 8, 2019

 

Yeah, agree. I think with some time that he and Penilla will work well together, but we'll see.

I'd like to see someone in there instead of Agudelo.

Yeah, wow. But, it looks like Friedel is calling him out for it.

 

That was really close and I prefer to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt on close offsides possibilities, so I'm OK with not calling offsides here. Considering how close it was I can't fault the AR for not calling it, and a VAR review could have wasted 2-3 minutes to check every angle multiple times on an incident this close - I'd rather spend those 2-3 minutes playing the game than sitting through a review.

So Friedel can feel a bit upset about that non-call if he likes, but the team lost because they didn't do well enough in the final third.

 

All I can think of is the time in the Nicol era when the Revs lost a game on a late PK, but truth be told, they didn't play well at all. Someone asked Nicol if he was upset about the penalty call, which was somewhat border-line.

"Wassit a penalty? Ah dinnae. Yuh kin blayme th rafaree effya lake, bu' a tha endathadey, yuh gut tae loo' a yuurself inna mirra."

So had they disallowed the goal, what are the chances we would have won, or even drawn?

 

It certainly looks to me like Friedel is following Higuain and immediately whips around and yells something in the direction his assistant went. Does it not look that way to you?

I agree that sitting through the reviews is pretty frustrating (although I watch the away games on dvr, so I have the option to ff through it), but there are very few goals scored and this was a particularly tight contest.

That's really an almost impossible call for the AR to consistently get right, with defenders stepping back (or up) at the last moment, a whole bunch of attackers looping around and timing runs through the offsides line. We're really asking them to track 3-4 runners timing the play, noticing which passed the defensive line too soon and being able to match them with which of them attempted to play the ball. It's really humanly impossible if you think about it (which is why it's become a favored method of taking free kicks).

For me, that call absolutely deserved a review (even if there are too many overall) - most of which could be done while Cbus was still celebrating.

 

Only a couple more days before Atlanta game. When does injury report come out? I am interested to hear any updates on Castillo. And slightly dreading the status of Pity Martinez and George Bello (remember the goal he scored against Revs) who have been out but are probably close to coming back.

 

Hah, it's Matt Reis. All those bald guys look alike. lol.

 

Right, that may be what the fine print says. I'm talking about common sense.