After two road wins, the Pacific road trip continues with a trip to Centurylink Field to face the Rave green clad sounders on a Friday night match on NBCsportsnet. Sooo yeah. We need Camargo back ASAP, the Sounders are looking like contenders this year. I'm a little worried about Hainault being able to contain Estrada. ---------------- -Mod edit- Game Info Who: Dynamo vs. Seattle Sounders When: Fri March 23, 9:00 pm CDT Where: CenturyLink Field, Seattle TV/Radio: NBC Sports, La Ranchera 850 What: Houston tries to make it three road wins in a row to start the 2012 MLS season. Watch Parties Orange Bar - 1613 Richmond Avenue hosted by Texian Army. Happy Hour prices all night long for patrons wearing orange. $2.50 domestic bottle & drafts, import bottles & drafts $3, St Arnold's $4, house margaritas $3. All ages welcome. RSVP Here. The Den - 4835 Calhoun hosted by Brickwall Firm & El Batallon. Drink specials include: $3 Jager shots, 20 oz. Lone Star imperial pints, and wells. $4 20 oz. Guinness imperial pints, plus free hamburgers and hot dogs! All ages welcome. RSVP Here. Firken & Phoenix Pub - 1915 Westheimer hosted by The Firken Soccer Show/Soccer 4 All/Keeper Notes. Special: 1/2 off wings. Richmond Arms - Dynamo's official watch party - 5920 Richmond. Dynamo Girls, Dynamo Diesel, and the Dynamo Street Team. 21+ No Trolling. No Flaming.
Getting 3 against the first two opponents was huge....but I think a lot of people will do well v. Chivas. So Seattle will be a huge step up in competition IMHO. San Jose I think is middle of the tier in MLS this year. Seattle though is really, really good. Let's see if we are really, really good as well.
Dynamo @ Seattle, all-time: 07/11/09 SEA 2-1 HOU 07/21/09 SEA 2–1 (a.e.t.) HOU, U.S. Open Cup 10/29/09 SEA 0-0 HOU, playoffs 08/08/10 SEA 2-0 HOU 03/25/11 SEA 1-1 HOU That's 0-3-2 in all competitions with 3 goals scored and 7 allowed.
Of course I'd like a win, but Seattle's a tough venue and we've never won there. I'll say Dynamo win 1-0 because it feels good, but realistically, I'm completely happy with a 0-0 draw on this one. I'm hoping our defense holds and we get a clean sheet, but I don't see Seattle scoring more than two goals even in the worst case unless something fundamentally breaks in our team's defensive structure like a red card or an injury. Then again, who knows? They have speed and flair and obviously they have regained their confidence after the Santos embarrassment. I don't expect Ching to start (or play at all?) on the turf so I think we will either see Bruin or Weaver starting opposite Carr. This is not a bad thing, I don't think. it's good to mix it up a bit up top. Maybe forcing Bruin into a holdup role opposite Carr might open some doors for him. or maybe the clouds will part and heavenly light will shine down upon the combo of Carr and Weaver and some crazy magic happens. No, I didn't think so. If we're REALLY lucky, Luiz Camargo's fitness is further along than we realize and he'll be good to go on Friday to at least come in as one of Dom's famous 60:00 subs. How's that for some optimism?
I think Ching will play, he usually plays in Seattle (not sure about "usually" but I do remember him playing there.) And he'll have plenty of time to recuperate after Friday.
Two things. I often predict that Ching won't start in field turf games but that seems to have gone away recently. Or at least it is more unpredictable. Our last few league games on turf: October 14, 2011 @ Portland: Ching on the bench, did not play August 27, 2011 @ Vancouver: Ching started August 17, 2011 @ New England: Ching started March 25, 2011 @ Seattle: Ching came on as a sub August 14, 2010 @ New England: Ching started August 8, 2010 @ Seattle: Ching started So Ching has started in 4 of our last 6 games on Field Turf. Second, Camargo did play the entire reserve game against Colorado on March 13. I'm taking that as a good sign that he may get the start against Seattle.
Let me put on my orange-tinted glasses for a moment and re-tread a road we've been down a few times. I think when we look at perspectives on the Dynamo from last season given by the media (aside from Glenn Davis, who seems to see things like I do) and also by supporters of other teams, they look at last season as a whole and judge the Dynamo to be a weak road team. While this is true when you average out the whole season, I am more inclined to sort of break the season into two parts based around the acquisition of Camargo and Moffat and the subsequent move of Cameron to the back line. It's clear as day when we talk about it on our forum, but other folks just don't seem to "get it" that the Dynamo were a fundamentally different team at the end of the season than they were at the beginning or even the middle of the season. Since I'm not the type to publicly risk putting my foot in my mouth about these kinds of things, I usually keep my mouth shut and smile to myself because it's fun to watch people's dismay as a suddenly capable Dynamo back line smothers attack after attack from otherwise-dynamic teams. We saw it in Portland, we saw it in Philadelphia (with credit to Le Toux), we definitely saw it in Kansas City against a 4-3-3 with three quality attackers against us, and we even saw it in LA even though the final result didn't go our way. Cameron was a huge piece in this puzzle. Camargo is another major piece. If he can play on Friday, especially if he can play for 90 minutes, then there is a very good chance Seattle will be playing against a different kind of team than what they may expect. OK, now let me take off my orange-tinted glasses and point out that someone on the Dynamo front line needs to score some damn goals on Friday night!
I'd like to see Carr and Mac to play this one. Speed and height would do us some good in this game up front. Clark needs to step it up this game b/c I really don't expect much from Watson if they play him.Taylor did a good job last week on defense. If Dom wants to get creative, push Ashe back up front and bench Watson. Leave Moffat and Clark in the middle or play Dixon.
Bruin with Mac up on top. I think Ching and Carr are a better pair. Bruin and Mac should begin to play together. And Glass Legs should be a Sub not a starter.
we should show up wearing 'Hoops'. scare the 'sht' out of them. did anyone see what happened during the Chivas USA game? 40th minute. Watson has a bad pass. Dom yells at him from the bench and immediately looks at the bench and gets Luiz up to start stretching. if this keeps up, i don't think Watson makes it to the end of the year on this roster.
what i would of done from the get-go was play Clark on the left, Brad in the middle and Watson on the right but unfortuantely its too late for that. we're just going to have to hold on until Luiz returns.
All this bickering about the midfield is really taking attention away from the real problem. Our strike force is so anemic. On any other roster (besides New England Revolution and Montreal) none of our forwards would be starting. Not even slow-man Ching.
Ching / Bruin pairing not working as both are too slow. Ching is the better of the two for hold up and skill but is a little slower than Will. Brian needs a better foil like the 2007 Ngwenya.
Watson will be one of the first guys dumped during the June-July roster tweaking we do every year. He probably doesn't have a full guarantee (I hope) so he is a an outright cut candidate. This is a good point. The Moffat-Camargo-Cameron to the back trifecta made us in to a much better team late in the year. But the last few games were a relatively small sample of road prowess, and you could make the case that in at least two of those games that we won (including playoffs) were were outplayed but got the results. And we did get a decent number of road draws last year. It's just the victories weren't there. Our backline + Tally Hall should keep us in every game, home or away. I think that is the biggest difference once we stapled Hunter Freeman to the bench and moved Cameron to the back. Made everyone on the backline better. The midfield has a big impact on the forwards, but we don't have the forwards that can really create chances from beating defenders one-on-one. You can see our lack of speed hurts because even when we get a step or two on the defense, they reel us back in.
yup. i hear the Ching-Bruin complaints, but IMO you can't start benching people on the 180 minute sample-size until we have a functional midfield. let's see what they do once Luiz is back in the groove.