The Ice Cold Gangster's surface-hugging strike, as expected, ended up being a nominee for NWSL Goal of the Week. The competition will be hard to overcome, though: the first goal in the league from Sam Kerr will sure attract many votes, while you have to take into account Utah's huge fan-base when talking about Matheson's personal effort. Anyway, guys, we can still try to have Rumi win this one, can't we?
So the injury report is out and the good news is that Rapinoe is good to go for this game. I think we all knew that but good to have it confirmed. This on paper should be an easy game but we have always had problems with SBFC at home. That been said, I'll like to see some changes in the starting lineup. I'm hoping to see something like this: Williams Catley, Barnes, Oyster, Nielsen Utsugi, Long, Fishlock Rapinoe, Yanez, Kawasumi I think it's a foregone conclusion that Rapinoe will start. The question is who do you sub out? Taylor has played all minutes this season if I'm not mistaken. And at the end of that Portland match is looked like her legs just give out. So I think this is a good match to rest her and give Yanez a run out at CF.
Sorry for the delay on this. Yael has ulcerative Colitis and it's a very long term thing. She's been fighting it, to my knowledge, for at least 6 months. I would be a little surprised to see her on the field again this season. Happy, but surprised
I'm still a little baffled, but people close to the club say she was signed to play on the front line and we did see a little of that in Portland. Time will tell i guess.
I have been very concerned about this since we signed her. If you're going to build your team around a target forward, that forward has to perform. I think she needs to up her game. Still Christen Press rumors running around (transfer windows opens again in June) which would relieve some pressure on her and we have a solid club, but i want to see better control from Taylor.
But what about Nielsen? She certainly have the offensive prowess to play at RF late in games. I guess for me I think we need help in the middle as we always get over run in games in the second half and our only answer so far have been Morgan Andrews.
Theresa up front is a very interesting idea. That had not occurred to me. That could be very good. We need help on the front line. I'm not crazy about Bev as a CF, i think she I think needs to be at #10, not #9, she's great there. Andrews is young, but potentially the most exciting player on the team. I am both happy and scared that Vlatko keeps putting her in during very serious situations, but i have very high hopes for her.
Well, Megan is Megan. What do you say, guys? Reign's offense can be decent or even good without her, as seen in Portland last week, but with Rapinoe on the pitch we reach a completely different level. She can make things happen that wouldn't happen otherwise, she can basically score from all kind of positions and situations, and our offensive power is so much improved with her. Ok, we were playing Sky Blue, not the most impenetrable defense on earth, but I guess you know what I mean: Megan Rapinoe does make the difference. Also, I guess Nielsen for Westphal at the Right-Back position was definitely an upgrade. We called for this change and Vlatko complied. (Although, for some reason, he didn't give Barnes back to us yet). Lydia Williams was far from perfectly placed on McCaskill's goal, but she made up for that with a good dive-save later in the game. I've got the impression that choosing between her and Betos won't always be easy and it could happen on a game-by-game basis. We're now solidly at 2nd place, despite being two games behind most of the other teams. Should we win the catch-up games separating us from NC Courage, we could be just 1 point behind them and I'd say that, given the impressive start they had, it is really something. I don't won't to rush things, but I can really see Seattle finally reaching play-offs this year, after two disappointing seasons.
Another Reign game that I enjoyed from the comforts of my cell phone while on a road trip. Looked like a really fun game. Can't provide any indepth analysis (because of the cell phone) but it's good to have Rapinoe back. Adds another dimension to our offense because of her unpredictability. This is the third straight game that the stats says Allie Long was the woman of the match. I know we all missed Katie Johnson but I think the Long signing is working out really well. Utsugi is having a great stat to the season. That celebration from Rapinoe is actually a viral dance on instagram. It's a skinny alien dancing to spanish music.
We get another nomination for Goal of the Week, this time with our resident alien Megan Rapinoe. Although I've got a feeling that our former midfielder Christine Nairn could win this one. Also, Lydia Williams gets a nomination for Save of the Week, with her diving save in the final minutes of Saturday's game:
So I'm bored and decided to read some of the post game comments from the last match. Below are a few snippets I found interesting. Vlatko On the Kristen McNabb & Megan Oyster as the starting center backs for the third straight game: "I’m just happy that as a team we have an option. If we’re talking center backs, we have Lu Barnes and Maddie Bauer, two great center backs. They can come in, one or both at any point in time. Christen Westphal, who started the previous game and now we have Theresa Nielsen back, two great players. We have Alyssa Kleiner there, I think she’s someone that can bring different dynamics to our team. And then we’re talking the middle, Morgan Andrews is there. Bev Yanez who didn’t start this game, but she’ll be back there, and Jas Spencer, I mean we have options. And that’s what makes me happy. It’s tougher for me because I have to make some hard decisions, but ultimately that’s what it’s all about. Internal competition so we can bring the best out of every player." I know some of us are concerned about the continued absence of mainstays like Barnes but looking at it from this perspective it makes sense. One of the problems with Harvey is that she very rarely rotated her squad no matter how bad they performed. Vlatko right now is using his entire squad and I have no doubt that this will pay off later in the season or upcoming seasons. Also it's good to see that the starting lineup changes from game to game (more or less). The decision to give Westphal a couple of games make sense. Not only was the preseason short but we really didn't play any tough teams. Better to find out early in the year which players you can rely on than have to find out when it is too late. Not sure what the signing of Kleiner means for Westphal though. Rapinoe On having a defender behind her who likes to get forward and make overlapping runs, and if that’ll be a regular tactic going forward: "Yeah, definitely. I feel like the thing that is most advantageous for me and most dangerous on that side is when there are options. So Steph going forward, she’s great going forward and obviously great with her left foot... put in a brilliant ball for Jodie. To have that just opens everything up for me, and I think likewise for her, having me being able to pop into the middle can open it up. For other teams it’s difficult to defend against, you kind of have to take one or the other and then we have Rumi coming over there and making decisions as well. I absolutely love it when there are overlaps and other people going — it just opens up the game so much." Good point from Rapinoe about the extra dimensions that Catley and Nielsen adds to the offense. The last full back (right or left) we had that was capable of delivering a cross was Steph Cox. All others since then have been mediocre or worse. This makes the offense so much more dynamic and I look forward to more of that this season. That cross from Catley to Taylor for the opening goal was so perfect ... <kisses fingers> Fishlock On the difficult early schedule (4 in a row on the road and several bye weeks) and the positive results to date: "I think that this stretch could have gone one or two ways for us, especially when we lost Pinoe at the beginning of the stretch. She’s probably the best player in the world right now, so any team would miss somebody like Megan Rapinoe. But we also lost a lot of our internationals, so I think what is fantastic for us is that during that stretch when we were away on the road, this squad as a group came together and pulled out points for us. Huge points. And that I think come the end of the season, it will prove to be the difference in where we finish. So that is how much I think that stretch meant to us. In those moments with the players that we missed, Naho, Rumi, Lydia, Steph, Pinoe… you list those players and any team would miss those players and you’d think they’re going to have a little bit of a rough time, but the depth that we have in this squad is nothing but phenomenal. It’s probably the best squad we’ve had overall since 2014, no question for me. So I think that we might overlook just how good that month was for us with regards to being away on the road for a month. We played Sunday—Wednesday in one of the games, and we’re sitting here, played [among] the least amount of games in the league right now, and we’re sitting in a really nice spot. So for me the run on that away trip could be the difference in finishing where we want to finish at the end of the season." This is such a good observation from Fishlock and one that I have been thinking about in the last few days. Not only was that a really long road trip (4 away games) by NWSL standard by we played 3/4 playoff teams from last year. With the amount of starters missing it's remarkable that we were able to get 7 points out of 12. And as Fishlock said, it may not look like it now but at the end of the season when other play off contenders are playing away games, we will have home field advantage. Further more we still have 2 games in hand and are currently in 2nd place. So it has been a really good start to the year (and for Vlatko) all things considered. The full article can be found here: https://www.sounderatheart.com/seat...n-sky-blue-highlights-stats-post-match-quotes
It gets weirder and and weirder. In the press conference this week Vlatko called Barnes "world class" and listed her as a weekly potential starter. I'm really worried that the two of them may be on the outs or something. McNabb has been solid and Oyster very impressive, but i miss Barnsie.
I'm trying to stay positive and my take on it is that after missing all of the preseason with injuries, he is giving McNabb these games to get her up to speed with the rest of the team.
This is so true. It was both nice (you knew who was starting every week) and very frustrating. Harvey was great at building a squad and creating a team identity, but quite poor at in game management. I'm already noticing a difference with Vlatko.
This is a good point (although NC is certainly a tough team!). I'm not overly impressed with Westphal and by my figuring she's now lowest on a very deep depth chart.
That may explain the Kleiner signing. With international breaks, we will be losing a lot of our backline and even if there aren’t NWSL games during these breaks, these international players will still be exhausted
I am not aware of the exact time of the breaks. I suppose NWSL will stop for the whole Tournament of Nations?
Correct. To my knowledge there aren’t any NWSL game that overlaps with international breaks. The concern is even if there is not overlap, returning players are always fatigued when they have to play immediately after returning
US soccer said this past week that they would call the USWNT into camp on June 2 for the international break that starts June 4. That means that 4 NWSL games over the weekend, 8 teams will be without NT players. Portland has a bye that week.
Well Barnsie started last night and she had a great game! I thought she was player of the match. Barnes and McNabb did a fantastic job of holding Sam Kerr in check. Much of the match it looked like McNabb was reading the label on Kerr's jersey!!!