Saturday, June 30 • Kickoff: 7:30 PM • Lockhart Stadium Big stretch of matches starts tomorrow at home vs. Carolina! 3 matches in the next 8 days, against the two teams that are now ahead of the Strikers in the standings. Inconsistent play aside, we are still very tough to beat at home(only Minnesota has managed that feat since August 27 of last year). Tailgate starts at 3:30, see you there!! At the tailgate we're doing a "TIFO Raffle", you can win this awesome painting (which will be autographed by the team!!) by our man Joseph Gormley by entering the raffle. $5 per raffle ticket and all the money goes towards our TIFO efforts! Big thanks to Joseph and wife Erin for the effort and great idea!
Great win, Mark Anderson with both goals keeping up his ridiculous pace. If not for 2 from Pablo Campos for SA tonight, Mark would be leading the league. Got too close for comfort at the end, despite the 2 goals, we could have had at least 3 more. This team needs to get more of the "killer instinct", missing chances early nearly cost them 3 points again.
True, they tried to give away 2 or 3 points in the 2nd half, but they did do just enough to get 3 for themselves and move up a notch in the standings. I'll take it, but I don't know how much more of it my heart can take. It was getting too sloppy & scary at the end...
I was impressed with King playing in the back. Nice runs up the sidelines a la Lance, and was pretty solid in the defensive role as well. We heard the lineup over the PA and thought Shore had 3 forwards plus Anderson in the midfield lol.
Hmmmmm....announced crowd at the stadium was 3,586. Crowd listed on NASL site game report was 3,506. I winder where the 80 folks we lost went to?....
I was also impressed by King. He needs a lot of one-on-one work if he's going to make it as a defender, but the potential is there and his ability to go forward created a few chances, but hey, what else you would expect from a natural forward. He did however fail to track back on more than one occasion after surging forward. He needs more discipline/experience/stamina for that position. All things that can be worked on. What I liked most about him though was his ability to use his pace to recover after getting beat. A couple times someone would exploit his weak defending and get by him, but he was able to catch up to the player try containing him again. I just hope Shore can settle on a right back. We've seen Blake, Stewart, Granado, Orozco, and now King all feature there this season.
Shore knew what he was getting with King when he set up a safety net in Shanosky & Pecka as holding mids in front of Orozco and Stahl. Considering we've had trouble building methodically through the center as compared to down the wings and have had trouble in the back in general...kudos to him for figuring it out and making the pieces work. King's far better on the ball going forward and about as fast as (or faster than) Blake. The question is can he keep it up with the opponent knowing their chance is there. Unfortunately, even with the move, the hole between Lorenz, Stahl and the responsible DCM kept getting exploited toward the end of the game, thankfully it didn't happen one time too many. Hopefully it was a matter of Shanosky being out of practice as the DCM, he kept getting sucked out when it was obvious a lob up top was in Carolina's plans...though Lorenz definitely deserved some blame at various points as well.
I think most of us prefer Shanosky as a CB than as a DM. He seems too tall and awkward to change direction and move the ball around effectively in midfield. We were spoiled by Arguez. But Shanosky is a solid defender, and his distribution is very crisp and accurate out of the back. He's a defender that has been playing out of position. The problem though, is that if Shanosky is a CB, then what do you do with Ståhl and Stewart, both of whom need to be starters. I'm sure part of the loan agreement is that Shanosky must play which is why he has played "out of position" in the midfield, even when he doesn't look very convincing there. This is also why Toni and Jack have featured at LB and RB, respectively, is to accommodate Shanosky in his natural position. Finding a creative solution to get all three playing in their best positions at once is a tricky task.