Ellis gets a yellow for descent after a red card/pk and will sit out in Seattle. Sorry that's a bs card in the playoffs. Thin skinned PRO. ********'em. Almost every call after the red card has gone one way.
This run was a combination of over-achievement and timely Portland injuries. Bound to happen. But is unfortunate that they finally got attendance and are getting whooped. This is what happens when attendance lags performance.
This is kind of an over-achieving gimmick team all over the field and they need to sit down and figure out who is actually quality enough for continued rebuilding. One area to me is forward. I don't know if anyone but Elis is really a quality guy and even then he can't knock em in half his chances. I mean, Manotas, Torres, are they that much better than Bruin was. They kind of slapped something veteran together and made it this far but all over the field it's like there is 1 really good guy on each formation line and then many frustrating people around them. Keep the good ones and then honestly blow the rest of it up.
Roman Torres did a good job of just ramming into people and knocking them off their feet and it took the ref 80 mins to notice.
When the season began based on preseason I was concerned the defense had some age and lacked depth and would be exposed at the B team level. I also felt like Beasley was past it. Anibaba was getting abused, committed a round killer red, and Beasley got burnt for goal 2. I generally blame Jordan for that, except I'll never understand starting Anibaba. You might as well play Machado wide because Anibaba just isn't the level and will eventually get you killed. Ditto Beasley and Remick. They need to get a couple good young backs in where this isn't riding the line to injury and retirement so close. And then the horrific bench backs save Remick need to be churned for people who either have promise or at least don't suck.
In terms of the new "young" mids, they looked overmatched and anyone who thinks this is the future hopefully took note. Alex disappeared. Martinez couldn't get the crosses past the first man. Cabezas couldn't break up plays and Seattle would just park and play triangles for hours. And the people who liked Alexander.......did he play? Sanchez has been the dynamic player in the playoffs. An old fart. What does that say. I'm not saying this to be a jerk, this is just another game like an Atlanta or Toronto where not for lack of effort we simply aren't even good enough. The concept needs to be reconsidered and it would be foolish based on how overmatched we looked to approach next season like we keep all the young players and keep rolling. I feel like it's "OK," marginal playoff type talent that hustled and over-achieved. We'd be setting this up for like the '11-'12 max possibility where we fight our way to big games where we are then overmatched on talent. I'd rather pick a small few of actual talents and blow the rest up lest we spend a few years treading water closer to the postseason line and not much more. If we're going to defend and counter, and trade off defense for playmaking, the legbreaker quality and how much range they can cover needs to go up. And if the idea is to be slick, this was always closer to a defend and counter quality and significant changes are needed.
Manatos should have scored on his burst into that box, had a good angle on it and really an inside of the foot shot probably beats the goalie, instead he went with what I thought was a slicing toe poke
I've enjoyed what we've done, and a few games ago this became gravy to me based on what I thought we were. I'll take any more gravy we can get. But let this be a reality check about where we really stand and how our roster stacks up. To me, buy Elis, keep Machado, and maybe a few more, and then take a wrecking ball back to the rest. I'll be curious how the ST sales react to this. To me it's not their fault that in the full traction part of the run the fans were still watching the Astros or stuck in the last 3 years mentality. But we're going to get lumped out this round and will fans who finally poked heads from shell be gun shy in getting back involved, even though I consider this a fair result and their fault for not showing in the winnable rounds or as the season progressed.
I think Beasley was a net negative on the night and overall the defense ran out of talent on the year. Tonight’s lineup struck me as . . . Odd
I do question if Cabrera is the long term answer based on squirrely lineups but there's not much point dwelling on that since they aren't firing a conference finalist coach. But next season Schmid will have time to refashion the Galaxy, Bradley in charge of LAFC, Seattle as always, Vermes in KC, I think if you want to compete you need the real deal on the field and in the dugout.
I’ll sum up tonight in the spirit of the tifo: “out of the floodwaters and over to the Roosevelt Lounge”
I think they were saving some names for leg 2 like in the previous rounds but maybe over-estimated whether they could get away with fielding subpar against a Seattle team hitting on all cylinders as opposed to injured Portland. To me Cabrera gets cute and tends to like to repeat his ideas that work. I think we finally played a good team this playoffs and he got exposed for some dumb ideas. And the Elis card and some of the backline injuries have now jacked up the plan. I would like to have seen Keyner Brown back, or at least a better mix of young and old in the intended lineup. This concept was just too old and something like Delagarza was close to inevitable as a probability over time. Once that happened big dropoff to the bench. And then Beasley, since roughly last summer has been being abused for club and country and is living off rep. Remick goes in and it fixes itself. At least some of what we did was just sign names. Beasley at this stage ain't anything more than a name. Senderos and Leonardo would look decent and then get hurt. Next year and beyond think about it like we want the starters to last the season, and to be here for 5 years. But I think this was slapped together to do what it did, make the playoffs, get the fans re-interested. But as a result almost every back needs to be reconsidered for 2018. It's not a very lasting foundation.
The backline issues many of us cited earlier in the year - veteran (old) and injury-prone. But allowing the two header goals - especially one from Bruin who couldn’t score here with his noggin if was the size of Dynamo Diesel’s Head - was just awful. Can’t tell on the corner if Senderos or Alexander blew the mark on the 1st goal.
BTW, the FO needs to stop honoring Dynamo non-legends like Mike Chabala and Bobby Boswell and trying to sell them as legends. Just stop. Boswell wasn’t even on the team in 06-07 and Chabala I don’t think played a first team minute in MLS play until 2009
The night started out on the wrong foot to begin with!!! http://mobile.twitter.com/victoraraiza/status/933159179501621248
It eas a legit sellout with limited no-shows. On the turf, Elis slipped multiple times cutting and so did a few others. The ball seemed to roll fine but the field played like it was very wet in terms of slipping but we have had so little rain the last 6 weeks that seems impossible to happen.
"stop me, uh uh oh stop me. stop me if you think you've heard this one before" homage to the smiths still waiting on all the manotas hype to materialize. been waiting all year Human Toast 2 is a man sized turd in cleats. I never want to see him again wearing orange. he has surpassed sarkodie; aka human toast 1, on the "terrible right back for the dynamo scale". Elis being dirty caught up with him. why, in the last quarter of the season, has he turned to pescadito like play? His speed will be missed on the plastic in weedville. his dumbassery has gotten old quick why was alex subbed off and martinez left in after the red card? should have been other way around IMO. martinez was down right garbage last night and we really could of used Alexs play making skill in the middle speaking of play making skill...why no Vicente Sanchez? again, Martinez should have come off and made way for Sanchez towards last third of the game Stumbledore got inside of beaz on his goal. that is to be expected given the size differential. where was Willis? That ball should have at least been challenged by the keeper and instead, ol Joe stood on his line and shrugged. He did an outstanding job on the PK. field is still terrible. i just don't get it. so you call the houston "legends" on the field and you don't turn off the sprinklers. is everyone in that building a former clown car alum? I don't see how we score two on the road. we won't win any set pieces due to seattles clear height advantage across the board and martinezs inept ball placement. missing Elis will slow us down as well. They won't has Torres which will help and Frei may still be hurt but we will need to put at least a dozen shots on goal and i don't see where that will come from. I saw a real live fight in the stands. don't remember ever seeing that in bbva and i've never seen it a section outside of the SGs. so there was that..... PS The TIFO was straight legit! Bad ass and kudos to all who put that together. Would love to see something like that every game. Well done SGs and all that helped!
Anibaba, wtf were to thinking when you drug that guy to the ground? Willis could have saved it, we could have gone 2-0 with 11 men on the field, but no... you thought getting a red card was the best idea... you ********! You will not be here next season. This ref was absolute shit. Our finishing was shit. I will commend the team for not giving up more than 2 goals, because if Seattle was smart enough, I would have dropped the hammer and full court pressed Houston to put this shit to bed game 1. We have an actual opportunity to still win this. Manotas in Elis's place and we look good. Tirade Finished. Lastly, and I say this with ever fiber of my body..... EB, TA and whoever the ******** is in the Supporters Group. Hell mother********ing yes on the tifo! I am so so so so so so so proud of that display! It made me hard see it! Make more of them and lets reclaim our spot at the top of list of supporters in this shit ass league! We no one else represents Spanish, American, European supporters like we did when we first got in the league and no one has worked harder to stay alive and well! I love you guys and miss everyone of you! Keep working brothers!