RSL 2019 Game 10: Portland at Salt Lake, Saturday 4 May 7:00 pm

We play way too slow! Should be moving like we know what we're doing instead of getting the ball and then deciding what to do. Drives me crazy!

 

Midtable at best. Lucky if we make the playoffs. I'm considering buying a ticket for the fire petke train...

 

The offense had some moments but bounces, traps and the final quality pass seemed elusive.

Defensively it was a poor night - RSL were repeatedly burned on counters (including off a corner) and didn’t close out well.

The starting DMid combo was very overmatched - can’t give Diego space...

 

We have had season tickets since 2008 and this has to be the very first time my wife and I left before the whistle. Granted it was 2 minutes deep into stoppage time but I’m still pretty disgusted with this team.

Lots of young and somewhat talented players but sadly they’re nowhere near as good as they seem to think they are.

ESPECIALLY BOFO.

I just don’t get the Bofo love. The guy would probably only start on one team in MLS and that’s the Crapids.

Start trading some of these guys. No one on this team should feel like they have any job security.

It also doesn’t help that they lost to the team I despise more than any other team in MLS.

Damnit to hell I am so pissed at this team that’s staring down a lost season of craptacular suckiness.

EMBRATSU

 

Very strange press conference after the game. The media asked Petke 3 questions. That was it. And they were pretty bad. “How did it feel missing that PK and them scoring a few minutes later?”

Petke addressed 2 of the things observed in this thread. First, the slow play. He said we have pace up front and it’s beung wasted. He offered that maybe his practices aren’t structured right. Second, he said Johnson is off-sides a lot partially because the ball is being sent late.

It was a strange dynamic in the stadium. The fans had no energy. The PTFC group was louder. And the crowd wasn’t that big tbh. I expected close to a sell out.

 

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3h

RSL's PK miss was the first time ever in MLS play that the Timbers saved a PK and the rebound wasn't scored. 47 PK attempts by Timbers opponents. 3 saves and 2 were scored on rebounds. #RCTID

 

First game I've attended in person all season. The missed PK was really over-thought, he was waiting for the keeper to react and the keeper won that game of chicken (and what a stretch). As I sat on my disappointment today - I realized it's not the result that bothers me. It's the basics. The whole second half RSL was really stretched out 3-4 up front in a line and the rest on D. The whole game RSL was sloppy with traps, with passes that forced the receiver to adjust (or passes that went straight to the Timbers). It wasn't clean soccer.

 

so it could have been a whole lot worse? Yikes
To be fair, I thought Ebobise was fantastic against us. His hold up play is something we desperately lack.

 

But we couldn’t pay Nani $1M.

 

1. Traffic around the stadium is worse than it has ever been. I don't know why, but it is atrocious. It's especially strange given we just don't have a large attendance anymore.
2. Speaking of which, what is up with that? The Jazz are able to get fans out in mediocrity, why can't we? Is it purely location? Prestige of the event? etc. It's curious to watch.
3. Remember when these two teams were the class of the league and especially the West? When you could circle these match-ups for some really interesting and fun soccer that would really dictate the standings? It looks like Portland is finding their way back to that while we look like we're trying our best to distance ourselves from it.
4. Imagine my surprise when the starting lineup was announce and both Nick and KB were left out. Even further, both were out of the 18. Man, here comes that amazing depth we were sold on. Who takes their places? Nick "USL Allstar" Besler and Andrew "My Left Foot is a Prosthetic" Putna? Man, this team is DEEEEEEEEEP!!!!
5. Those two weren't the worst players for RSL in this game, though. That designation goes to pretty much the entire backline, but especially the outside backs. Herrera and Toia are showing how young they are and how, honestly, technically inept they are.
6. Especially when they were exposed by the great players that Portland has: Valeri and Blanco. Both of them took over the game for long stretches and simply were the best players in the game.
7. Speaking of which, our "Best Player" is annoying as hell to watch lately. It seems to be somewhat tactically driven to have Rusnak play as a false 9, but it's also showing to be his style of play. Which, fine, that's great if we can find a way to move the ball up the pitch. But good god it's painful to watch this team get the ball to the outside backs and NOT have the best player on the team demanding the ball.
8. I'm not going to really sweat the PK. For starters, I thought the call was harsh. I know the law is being changed to essentially punish a player for having arms so whats the point anymore? Further, the PK was well placed, it was just a hell of a leap and he pushed it wide - hey, that's a novel concept isn't it, Putna?
9. Whats irritating with Rusnak is that he seems fine with not being involved in the play a lot. Hell, not even a reasonable amount. I used to rag on Luis Gil on here for his incessant jogging. Rusnak will open his legs and sprint, but god he won't demand the ball.
10. Rusnak accounted for 5.8% of the possession in the game - good for 6th best in the game. The 5 players with more kind of shocked me: Kreilach (6.6), Onuhoa (6.5) Glad (6.1) Herrera (6), and Blanco (6). That pretty much every player BEFORE Rusnak in the spine had possession of the ball more is alarming. It means it's in those spaces and he just isn't getting connected to the play.
11. This has to change, the tactics of Petke have removed Rusnak's influence and it shouldn't be a surprise that the team is (a) boring as hell to watch and (b) isn't successful.
12. We can bitch and moan all we want about the abundance of wingers, but the most damning thing for me with this team has been the lack of focus on Albert Rusnak. There are a lot of factors to this, one that doesn't get talked about enough, in my opinion, is the Kreilach/Rusnak relationship. Those two tend to want to play the same space and take each other off the ball.
13. Anyways, back to the actual game: We actually won the possession battle in this one - only the second time we've done so this season. But it was rather pointless possession for long stretches. Portland, on the other hand, was pretty damn good with theirs. They got into the space between the wingers and outside backs with ease and absolutely destroyed us once there.
14. The best moment of the game surely was the goal for Johnson (what a touch/ball by Baird) and the ensuing 5 minutes. However, we showed just how fragile this team is in the ease at which Portland broke us down, again, and found the back of the net.
15. All of this goes without saying just how TERRIBLE the tactics were for the last 25 mins. After giving up the goal Petke panicked. There is no way around it. The subs made sense on paper, but clearly lacked instruction and thought. The coaches may have changed, but once again our coach was just beat out by quite a bit by the other in how each team wanted to play and the subsequent adjustments. I've never seen a team look so lost at the end of the game like we did. It essentially turned into a 3-2-5 and, this really shouldn't surprise anyone, was painful to watch.

 

I cannot agree enough.

On one particular attacking sequence, Herrera basically had no idea what to do in the final 1/3. he took RSL from a numbers up situation and ruined it. The crowd murmered loud enough that it got in his head and he screwed up nearly every touch and pass after.

Petke is relying on the outside backs to help initiate the offense - and both are substandard on the ball. It is simply maddening. I'm not sure what Brooks did to get in the doghouse, but he really needs to get out quickly.

 

One other incident of note late in the game that could be a bit telling and that was a run by Bofo.

There was a ball played through and Bofo took off chasing it but wasn't really running that fast. A few frustrated fans in section 25 right where ball was going out yelled at Bofo to run. Turns out it he was waiting for the offside flag to be raised.

He actually heard us yelling and gestured back to them with his arm raised for offside.

Players with rabbit ears are not a good sign.

 

Also, something that frustrated me was when Plata came on. He seriously just did a slow jog around for a few minutes. Not sure what he was supposed to do...but I would have thought it would be something like using whatever speed he has left, try to break down the defenders or make runs into space. Not do his best imitation of Luis Gil jogging around while watching the ball get passed between Portland players. I think they missed the best opportunity to get any value out of trading him. What's new?

 

a bit telling? I thought the offside flag was already risen on an earlier ball, I could be wrong. I feel that there are many other items to criticize about Bofo than that he told you off.

 

Absolutely.

It's not that he told us off, which was probably deserved, it's the fact that he was actually affected by fans yelling at him. Keep your head in the game.

To me it just highlights the fact that there are a lot of issues on this team and instead of getting better it just seems to be getting worse.

Getting baited into conversing or simply acknowledging idiots like me should be very telling.

Very.

 

Fair enough, but I don't think it was just you criticizing the run some of the players warming up were critiquing that run as well. P.S. I think I was sitting in front of you at the game.

 

Nice. I hope.

Section 25 row h. I used to bring a lot of confetti but MLS wants to be the new NFL (no fun league)

My wife is very, very disappointed in the no confetti bs. She mentioned that when LA shot off their confetti cannon last week. She was pissed. How come LA gets confetti and we don't?

I said, it's LA.

 

I got some free tickets on row F. I was never a confetti / Streamer fan anyhow but I had no issue with people throwing them as long as they were not trying to peg a referee or an player.

 

ugh, don't remind me of how elementary the adjustments by Petke were. It felt like I was watching a 12 year old playing FIFA on semi-pro that was losing at the end of a game. PUT ON ALL THE OFFENSIVE PLAYERS!!!!