What I meant to say was anyone thinking we get out of this with a draw or better is thinking outside the box... NYRB won't take this seriously and we are going to work all week to learn the names of our teammates.
Props to: 1) The fans for sticking through that one in the cold; 2) Nick Rimando for the two really big saves; 3) Albert Rusnak for calm and control all game long, including the penalty; 4) Brooks Lennon for holding down his side of the defense in an emergency role; 5) Kyle Beckerman for rebounding in the second half (his first half was nearly as bad as last week); 6) Corey Baird, for a stellar substitute appearance.
NYRB started to play frustrated and desperate, and lost cohesion in passing. They may have been altitude tired, too.
Yes to all of this. I'll be curious to see what happens with Lennon in the long run as he did quite well in that defensive position.
In other news, I get to go to Red Bull Arena next week for the NYRB-MUFC game. Unless the weather looks like what it did at the RioT tonight, in which case all bets are off.
A few thoughts: An okay-ish performance against NYRB's reserve squad I liked Lennon at RB last year (late in games) and if that's the best way to get him minutes this year, I'm in favor The guy from the German USL had a really good game The Spaniard looked very ordinary in his first start Phillips was terrible (again) Bofo was really helping defensively on the left before his injury The 4-4-2'ish that the team played after Sunny came on was very effective. NY was quite stretched at that point which surely helped. Baird looked good in his substitute role
The Sunny substitute for Ortuno really paid off. He played well and intercepted that dangerous cross when we had no one else between the intended receiver and Rimando. Ortuno certainly would not have been there. Give Petkov credit for that move. All in all I accredit this win to CCL. Nonetheless, you get the points any way you can and we needed them.
So, the benefit of sitting at midfield on the 2nd level is it is REALLY easy to recognize the shape RSL was playing. Petke DID go back to what RSL did in Dallas. Defensively that was a true 4-5-1. Offensively, RSL tried to get out quickly to create some space, but it did not work particularly well as the Red Bull defensive swarm in the midfield was really impressive. Rusnak mentioned after the game that he felt like he had no time or space the whole game, and he was correct. (Ex: when Beckerman pulled off the roulette to beat two players in the midfield trying to switch the field, he still had to play an emergency 1 touch to get past the 3rd midfielder.) With BWP on the field for a whole game, unless the opposition has a special forward or a winger with big speed, the Red Bulls will be REALLY tough to beat. With that being said, the RSL D, when locked in, is fine. Glad had to spend extra time covering for Phillips, but, whatever. Offensively, I would have loved to see the Red Bull try to press that hard against the RSL of 2010. RSL would have solved the tight spaces and been out the back side all night long. With this crew, eh, not so much, especially with Phillips. Going forward, I'm afraid that this team is NOT the team that Petke thought he had. I think he thought he had a team that could play wide open and press high. Nope. His d-mids are NOT athletic enough and at least 2 of his defenders are suspect enough (Phillips and Horst) that the other team will kill it on the counter. While Kreilach is a skilled and intelligent player, he is NOT dynamic athletically. Add in the fact that, unless specifically instructed to do so, the wings don't like to defend, and RSL does not have the defensive chops to play Petke's preferred offense. I think we will see more of the packed 4-5-1 defensively going forward, with an emphasis over the next 2 weeks on passing out of tight pressure. RSL does NOT have the forwards or wings to knock a 50-50 over the top and win the race, so it will have to solve the midfield and then work into the final 1/3. Baird and Lennon both showed VERY well. I agree that Acosta must have really pissed off Petke as Phillips is obviously being overwhelmed on both sides of the ball and Petke still won't play Acosta. I think Plata will quickly find himself in the same boat, especially if the D shape expectation continues to be tight with full numbers. I'm not sure why Petke is trying to damper the Lennon for right back talk. He's tough in the tackle, surprisingly good in the air (for his height), quick, fast, and good going forward. Frankly, if either Barry or Henley can play on the left, THEN you could allow Plata to hang out between the other team's defensive lines without defensive responsibilities to allow him to be the pressure release valve. If neither Barry nor Henley can play the left, then we may see more of Baird. His speed is an element that neither Bofo nor Plata can bring. So, this game was really what I expected to see out of Petke. I give him props for his evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the team and for being willing to ugly up the game to make sure he got a result. We will see more of the same in two weeks vs Toronto. The question will be whether RSL's midfield will have gelled in the short game by then to allow the team to get forward.
A lot of you have covered what I would say in this so I apologize if these seem especially weird Because of some scheduling conflicts and whatnot my group got to this game as the players were coming out the tunnel so I didn't get to suffer through warm-ups. Thank god. How the hell is that a penalty? I'm sorry, but David Horst should get an award for that embellishment. Does the NYRB player pull on him a bit? Sure. But come on. If that's a penalty then every corner kick (especially when David Horst is defending) has a PK. I'll take it but good god was it a bad call, IMO. The players were really pumped to get that early goal, it was cool. Though it kind of cracked me up when they're yelling into the crowd in the south east corner where like 12 people were. The rest of the first half was boring as shit form an RSL perspective. We couldn't complete more than 3 passes that went horizontal or forward. It was painful as shit. David Horst as our 3rd CB option isn't good enough. The guy isn't awful, but he's pretty bad. The more he has to play, the worse this team is going to be. Brooks at RB is interesting. We didn't really get to see his offensive abilities a whole ton this game because you have to have an offense to show that. The Wingert thing felt really last minute. The second half started just as bad as the first half from an RSL offensive perspective. Why do our CB's constantly launch the ball forward? Why do we bypass the midfield so readily? Petke made comments that this game was about fixing defensive issues and thus wasn't going to be pretty. Ok, fine. But we looked like a team that was playing in their first competitive match of the year with just how bad we were on offense. Like, I would expect that kind of performance after 2 or 3 weeks of nothing but defensive talks, but as the 3rd game of the season? WTF? Kreilach is going to get a lot of cards if he thinks he can go into tackles like the way he did in this game freely. His yellow was very deserved and he was inches from being sent off. I loved the guy in the first match at FCD but this game wasn't something to write home about. KB is slow as shit. This isn't new, but it's becoming more and more prevalent. After watching Sunny come in and control the game more, I'm really wondering what the lineup would look like with KB on the bench or at least slated to be a sub. Ortuno was garbage this game. That might be a bit harsh for a guy who got the service he did, but I was really hoping he would show us something. He was out there going through the motions. It's rather telling that we looked better offensively when we didn't have a true forward on the pitch. Baird was fun to watch. If nothing else, the kid busted his ass. In this game, that was unique as both teams looked like they just wanted to head to the showers and warm up. Dafuq was with Robles punting the ball into the stands? Kudos to the guys in section 26 for not chucking the ball back on the pitch after he did. I would have thrown it at him to really piss him off. This game was boring. Please fix that.
I'm afraid that's how it's going to be early on. It took the team a while last year to get clicking. I'll take boring, ugly wins over losses any day though.
He was pissed that the crowd threw the ball onto the pitch, thinking they were deliberately trying to stall the game. Personally I don't think our home crowd in general is savvy enough to do that deliberately but whatever. Not sure why Robles took offense to it, with the amount of time he was taking to put the ball back into play I seriously thought he had forgotten that we scored a goal.
I always look forward to you thoughts. I agree that it wasn't a penalty, for sure, but I would argue it was a foul. Yes Horst makes a meal out of it at the end but I would have put it outside the box. How it ended up a pk is beyond me and obviously VAR capabilities.
The foul started outside the box, but the full body take down occurred inside the box. I think I saw on an EPL broadcast recently that fouls that continue to within the box should now be called as penalties.
The irony is that the fans weren't the ones who threw that ball back out. When he punched the ball off the roof of the net, it hit one of the handrails and bounced back. Had he been chill and just popped it off the net to the ball boy nothing would have happened. Instead he went all SUPERMAN PUNCH BALL and dealt with it.
I don't like that. While it's a limited situation, you're going to see players stay on their feet around the box just to fall once they get in the box. And nothing anyone says here will convince me Horst didn't embellish the shit out of that. He tried to get a foul, nothing more.
Just a quick couple of thoughts. Anyone who thinks Kreilach is a huge upgrade is wrong... Ok, maybe that is a little harsh, but what we truly lacked in the CM department last year was speed. We did not improve there and maybe took a step back. Yes Kreilach is technically better than Luke and Sunny but I think he is slower than both. IMO this makes him not a good pairing with KB. It's early and I could be wrong and I'm willing to wait and see but I have my doubts. I would like to see Berry as our 3rd CB when possible. Hard to judge without seeing but I wouldn't be surprised if he looks better than Horst. Last thought Baird looked really good. That being said NYRB were pushing for the tie and he had loads of space to work with. IMO he looked good mostly because he was trying to be a forward and not a 10... Bofo, Savarino, and to a lesser extent Plata all seem to want to be the creator. Sometimes this is good, but sometimes it would be nice to see someone like Baird who is looking to make runs behind the defense instead of in front.
Last week, despite VAR, they missed an obvious offside call on a goal. The VAR giveth and the VAR taketh away.
I think if it had not been a penalty a la embellishment, VAR would have picked that up and Horst would have gotten a yellow card. Now, if the disco committee (Redundancy!!) later this week says that Horst was guilty of embellishment, then I take back everything I said.
If the opposing team's broadcast crew doesn't have an issue with the call, I would say that it was the right call.
Stayed for the whole thing. Yes, it got a little chilly. Fortunately, I found my now-useless NCAA bracket printout in my pocket. The scant flames it emitted while burning kept my hands warm.
Would it maybe end up being a better pairing if it's Sunny/Kreilach instead of KB? I feel like we're going to need to limit KB's minutes anyway to keep him more fresh, so we're going to need to figure out what other pairing is going to work when he's not playing.