The Fall time change always feels like it is several hours later to me on the first couple of nights, and that it is somehow approaching midnight right now instead of 8 or 9 pm. And this game is sleepy already - a brutal combination.
As a lifelong fan I can stand losing seasons but year after year of mediocrity is hard to swallow. Year after year of not doing enough but with the attitude of we did do enough. Year after year of unexciting, uninspiring, heartless, underwhelming, lackadaisical, visionless soccer is getting nigh impossible to support. I'll still be watching next season but with our current ownership woes there nothing to inspire a shred of hope that next year will be any better. If this team was a player it would be Luis Gil. 90 minutes of lazy jogging with the occasional nutmeg to sustain the illusion of value.
It appears that we're playing a team much more physical than we are. Not sure we're ready for it, but the ref is letting a lot go.
This club has been riding the revenue of a full stadium for years. Not having a full stadium buying hot dogs and beer is a tough loss. This is going to be a tough couple years.
We need the new ownership to work out ASAP so all kinds of other decisions can be made, also as soon as possible. Pavon is good. Very good. And we're bad. That's a tough combination. Maybe Freddy would like to sub on some offense?
Silver lining: we saved ourselves from the inevitable 5 goals to nil embarrassing early exit in the first round of the playoffs.
While the season won't end officially until next week, it really ended when they decided with LA FC to not play.
You all may or may not believe this, but we need a goal to keep our season alive and we have another forward on the bench. Forwards have been known to score goals periodically. Milan Iloski is his name. Two minutes plus stoppage is left in the season, and there he sits.
Watched every minute. Just love how Dunny must be contractually obligated to blame every woe and RSL mistake on everything and everyone EXCEPT Freddy and the utter lack of quality coaching. What a joke.
I feel like the organization gets away with this by getting a playoff spot and leveraging that for all it's worth that we've hopefully got enough for a just few tweaks to make the next year different. Not this year. They need to get the new owner sorted ASAP and then hopefully bring some structures in place to focus on necessary change for any hope in 2021. I may actually be around SLC for the first half of the season and would to attend games with some excitement and enthusiasm with a new direction. But I'm not holding my breath.
Too little, too late from Douglas. I assume you are not totally serious in this sentiment, but if past is prologue then folks in the RSL office will indeed squeeze this goal as a glimmer of hope to keep him around as the hopeful first or second option up top.
The service to Douglas was so good even he couldn't screw it up. Look, I don't hate the kid I hate the fact that he is our best (and now only) striker. It's not his fault there's no one ahead of him.
you'll notice Dunny does a good job of spreading the blame everywhere but on nobody. It's quite the acrobatic experience - Dunny quote 1: I came into this year saying this roster was better than year's past and thought this team really could compete - Logical reaction 1: Oh, so we should look at the GM and makeup of the roster? - Dunny/Co Reaction: NO! Elliott is amazing Dunny quote 2: This simply isn't good enough from the players. They are static and look uninspired Logical reaction 2: So Freddy is lacking in his tactical setup, individual gameplans, and overall managing of the team? He probably should go Dunny/Co Reaction: NO! Freddy just needs more time Dunny quote 3: These players aren't doing enough. They look slow and uninspired. No fight. Logical reaction 3: Oh, so we should be looking to part ways with a lot of these guys in the offseason? Dunny/Co Reaction: NO! This roster is just around the corner from being great It honestly is becoming exhausting to watch. Dunny describes a fire, smells a fire, sees a fire, but yet when it comes time to call the fire a fire he hesitates on calling the fire department. This club needs to be cleaned out. Especially in the off field positions. I genuinely hope the new ownership comes in and wants to install a vision.
I sat down and watched this game. I regret that. i could have done much better things with my time. Most anything. Anyways, here are 15 thoughts about the cluster******** of a performance How poorly does Freddy rate Alvin Jones if he would rather play Justen Glad very obviously out of position and out of his comfort area at right back over him? What an absolute mess of a roster selection. Dunny made a comment that had more snark in it than I think he realized: "If Herrera wasn't suspended, would Glad have been on the bench again?". Honestly, Freddy's continue favortism to Silva is completely unjustified. The guy isn't a starter level CB for a team that wants to do anything in this league. Further on that, why not go 3 in the back if you're going to have 3 center backs across your back line? Yank Toia out of the starting lineup, lord knows he's logged more minutes in this schedule than he should have, and try a 5 man midfield and 2 forwards. It would be a sign of wanting to try something new. But no, that isn't Freddy. We only try new things when we're playing against Minnesota. The first 15 minutes of this one were brutal on the eyes. So many careless turnovers by both teams. So many dumb fouls. So many plays that looked like 2 teams that really couldn't care less to be there. This team has no clue what to do in the middle to final third. The tactics are embarrassingly simple. In the first half, we would get the ball to the final third and literally turn around to go back into the middle third. Players weren't pushing forward. We kept waiting on Kreilach to do something amazing and, well, that didn't happen. Oh, and Rusnak? Forgot he was on the field in the first half. The pairing of Everton and Pablo was decent, but it had flaws in that both players are very very similar. Once we won possession, those two occupied so much of the same space and/or moved to the same space that it actually killed our own transition. Justen Meram falls into the bucket of players like Burrito, Rachid El Kalifi, and Sebastian Jaime. He is a very good player on a technical level, but his skills do not match with what the team seems to want to do tactically. At the end of this match, there was a shot of Meram that gave the impression of him going "just one more match with this shitty team". Can't say I'll miss him. Corey Baird is a try-hard. In every negative sense of the word. That he was having words with Pavon as much as he was just baffled me. Corey needs to be sent on loan to somewhere where they play a technical brand of soccer. maybe a second division spanish team or something. Just something to remind him that running really hard and fast isn't soccer. With that said, Corey had the best attacking moment of the game for RSL with his chip. That was a great run and a good hit. Kudos to the Galaxy defender (who Dunny felt the need to shit on unnecessarily and had to eat crow for it) for making a solid play. Sometimes you just gotta tip your hat to the other team and say they were better on the play/day. After LA weathered our storm in the second half for the first 20 minutes, the best thing RSL was hoping for was a draw. We weren't scoring multiple goals with how we were playing. Kreilach had no clue how to find space in the LA backline, Rusnak made a solid Luis Gil impersonation with his jogging/standing. Pavon showed what you should expect, at least once a game, from your high paid DP. They need a moment of brilliance, otherwise I'm not sure why you're paying them all that much. They don't have to do it for the full 90 and every time they touch the ball, but they better have at least one moment a game where they remind everyone why they're paid so much. Pavon getting the ball at midfield and then outrunning both Glad and Silva (WITH THE BALL AT HIS FEET) was absolutely amazing. Further on this, Glad committed a defensive error on that play that I harp on my u9 teams. You don't make tackles from the side/behind where you try to poke a toe in. I mean, lets say Glad gets more of a touch on that ball, it goes... more towards our goal. In fact, I think Glad's attempted tackle gave Pavon the slight boost he needed (or really probably didn't need) to beat Silva. It was a bad play. Freddy made a double sub (HOLY SHIT!) in the 72nd minute and it changed RSL's tactics very noticeably. We finally went 3 in the back, we finally gave support up top, and we took advantage of how deep LA was sitting. It shouldn't be surprising that just 5 minutes later RSL scored. And, in all honesty, that was one of the easiest looking goals we've scored this season. Wide, runs, cross, goal. It was there for a lot of the game, RSL just wasn't willing to do the work to get there. Freddy made these subs, and saw an instant reaction/improvement. So, when you need 2 more goals in 10 minutes, you would think he'd throw caution to the wind and really go for it. What was Baird doing to still be on the field? What had Kreilach done to make us think he'd find goals? Why did we need Ruiz on the field still? It made no sense. Schmitt would have given us something different down the wing - fresh legs, if nothing else. And Iloski is on the roster because...? Once the clock rolled into the 85+ minute, though, I was actively cheering for LA to put us out of our misery. The worst thing would have been RSL snagging a goal and us hearing all week how RSL still had a chance to make the playoffs, yet. No, this team needed to have the dagger put in them. It should have been put in much earlier in the season. I don't know what anyone sees in this team that makes them think we should go into the 2021 season without massive changes. Sell Rusnak, off load every contract you can, dump the entire coaching staff, get down to a skeleton crew at the front office. There is nothing inspiring here. I get how demoralizing the DLH situation is for everyone. But all of these folks have to know they are in a situation where they have to prove they deserve to keep their job. Nobody is covering themselves in glory - quite the opposite, in fact.