That goal was Soares' fault unfortunately. He was bodied off the ball by Perez and the ref didn't call anything. When the ball came back in after SJ hoofed it he made it his mission to get some payback, resulting in the free kick. Very disappointing because he had another good game. Marking on the FK was atrocious as well it has to be said.
Absolutely disgusting and ********ing unacceptable. Period. Soares should be on the bench to start next game. I don't care, if he is our best defender. That was stupid, gutless and just plain ridiculous. Typical ********ing Revs. Win 2 against 2 good teams, come back and lose in the last seconds against a hurting/struggling Dallas team. Absolutely ********ing typical.
Sene MOTM for first 1/2 for me. Defending, transition, holding the ball, making run into space, dangerous making plays happen top of box, and as Heaps called for him being more selfish and shooting on goal, nice low shot to corner. SJ looks to have lost step and resorted to scissor kick upon getting stripped running with the ball. Professional foul that should be looked at. Hopefully SJ is not in 100% shape and will start to hit form as season progresses.
Sene? He was probably the worst player on the pitch for the Revs on the night. Even worse than Lechner. He dropped way too deep for the advanced forward. Gave the ball up over and over. Was bodies off the ball do easily. Shit first touch. Didn't create much of anything all night. I've been a Sene fan so far, but last night he was awful.
As I saw it, Joseph played too deep and Rowe too far forward, the opposite of what worked for us last week. This created possession problems, without which we likely would have won. Soares played well, but made a selfish rash decision that was punished as it should have been. Joseph's tackle that put the guy out looked awful in slow motion and could easily have been red. As he showed last week, Joseph can still be very effective offensively when playing a forward holding midfield position, but he is a major detriment when asked to play closer to his back line. For all the criticism he has gotten, I think Tierney has done well enough at L back. I like Nugyen, but he seems to hold the ball one touch too long much of the time.
I wouldn't be surprised if Shalrie's tackle on Villar makes him the first Revs victim of the Disciplinary Committee review.
A couple of thoughts: Reis- nice game (including a great save on the deflected Shea shot), but his ridiculously poor distribution was even worse than normal. If the Revs are going to play a possession game they can't be giving it away every time they have a goal kick or Reis touches the ball. Plenty of blame to go around on that goal. Shalrie giving it away and Soares with a dumb retribution foul, sure. But even more than that the Revs were completely unprepared to defend that free kick. Why were there four/five Dallas players at the goal mouth with only Shalrie marking them? Lechner and Cardenas and White were running around right before the kick was taken not knowing what to do. McCarthy was pretty solid- he won a ton of balls in the air. Made an early mistake in letting Castillo slide through, but that only happened once. Lechner...cannot be on the field against a team with that much pace. I'd rather have Barnes playing out of position. If Sene ain't makin' runs, ain't nobody makin' runs. Dallas' backline was very good and didn't let the Revs break them down, but there wasn't enough movement up front anyway. More Fagundez, less Cardenas please. Thought Shalrie generally had a decent game. He played some dangerous balls through the midfield. Definitely too easily dispossessed at times though, and slow to recover. Figuring out what to do with Joseph/Simms/Feilhaber will be Heaps' most important question IMO.
We did not look good last night - IMHO. We were better than we were last year in that we were able to string together 4-5 passes in a row at least. However, we had guys dribbling into trouble and losing the ball (Nguyen was a major culprit there.) We never got to the point where, even with that passing, we were able to create danger in the final third on a consistent basis. With all the 'positivity' of the last two games, this one took some of the shine off. A point would have been great - and even deserved - but the team did look slower of thought and of foot last night. Too often we were dispossessed while dribbling, or were missing passes (sometimes the passer's fault and sometimes the receiver's fault.) One pass in particular had me incensed when Guy was totally oblivious to a pass from Shalrie. Just jogging across the pitch with no sense of purpose or thought that he should be making himself ready and available to Shalrie. A little thing, but happened all too often across the board last night BTW - I agree with the poster that Sene did NOT have a good game last night. Glad to see Moreno get some playing time, not sure I saw anything to get excited about or concerned about. Not much to go on really. Front Office - we still need more help in terms of talent. (What would you give to get Hercules Gomez? Perhaps that question deserves it's own thread.)
Even with the two wins to give us hope I don't think there are many of us that didn't think the first third of the season wasn't going to be an ugly roller-coaster ride. We have added too many pieces, still have too many holes and still evolving as a unit to expect full 90 minute consistency. Hopefully the team and it's young coach learned a few lessons last evening.
And very deserved suspension. Expect him to be out at least 1 game if not more! As much as I like the video review after the fact..it does nothing for changing the game as it's being played. Both teams should have been down to 10 men. I think it was Castillo who slapped our guy...I think he'll get something for that too.
Jinx or no jinx...superstition or not.. But as soon as MOTM scrolled across the screen for Soareass, I thought! Watch him score an own goal or something..no more than a few minutes later..Poof!! Unreal..
I too have to disagree on Sene, a few good touches aside, I thought he was poor in the first half, and I wanted to see Moreno in for him much sooner. If I was going to call for Sene to change something, it would be to not fall over when someone brushes against him. When you're 6'2", you're not going to get calls for falling over when you're nudged, nor should you. Rowe was also off, not close to his previous couple of games. I was quite surprised to see Simms go off, and Rowe stay. We all love an attacking philosophy, but Rowe was off, and he should have been taken off. I didn't think Lechner was as bad as some are saying. Yes, he couldn't keep up with Castillo, but how many people can? The defense as a whole contained him for the most part, I believe his most dangerous play came on a give and go where he went through the 2 central defenders, but I could be forgetting something. I'd still prefer Alston though.
My observations on the goal and what lead up to it. 1) Joseph needs to be aware of the time remaining and the fact that Soares is injured and play that ball out of bounds. 2) What was our tallest and most dominant aerial defender, McCarthy, doing in the wall? He should be marking the most dangerous opponent. 3) Joseph just let Ihemelu run right by him to get to that ball. Seemed like the got flustered and were not properly organized to defend that free kick.
A few thoughts: Nguyen looks very comfortable on the ball but doesn't seem to want to take anyone on directly. The one time that he actually tried, he seemed to trick himself and leave the ball on a platter for the defender. I think Jay waited a little too long to bring on Pepe - maybe because he had decided to make such an aggressive move by swapping him for Simms instead of Guy/Rowe/Nguyen - but from the Cardenas sub until Pepe made his debut, it looked liked they were playing a 4-5-0 (or 4-5-1 if you choose to count Guy) with zero chance of scoring. Was shooting from distance the plan? There were a number of shots from far out which had little to no chance. I'm still blurry on the fatal sequence at the end. AJ went down and everyone looked uncertain of exactly what to do, then Shalrie inexplicably booted it down field, as if Dallas had played the ball out for AJ and he was just returning it to them. I'm not sure what he was even trying there? Maybe the beer was getting the better of me at that point but they looked strangely dazed from the moment AJ went down until the final whistle. I'm looking forward to re-watching this weekend, with some coffee instead of stout.
Agreed. I thought we looked generally like crap. There was virtually no buildup last night. I think the Riders drinking game should add "pass back to Reis --- chug" because that seemed the norm last night. Yeah, I thought he sucked. He can head the ball, but man, at least last night, he's actually putrid with the ball at his feet. It's like he has no idea what to do once he has it. Yep ... I feel pretty safe saying he's out for the DC home game. And deservedly so. To be fair to Reis, he was also given the ball at times where he was immediately put under pressure and he had to just boot it. Lechner had no clue what was going on all night, why figure it out in the 93rd? Overall, a thoroughly disappointing game. It's kinda sad to think that people were posting how tired the team looked. Great ... that makes me feel just great. This was a Dallas team that was set up to be beaten, and the Revs decided to return to what they're supposed to be. I thought we rarely looked dangerous. I think RevsFanDan and I were counting and Dallas had about 5 absolutely great chances, and I really don't remember that many for the Revs (other than a couple of long distance shots). The passing just wasn't there last night.
I agree that I hope the team and Jay learned some lessons last night. I am tired of the typical Rev's lack of cohesion and getting personnel in time being an excuse for a bad 'first third' of the season. Then, when we wait to see if the team gels, and it doesn't, then we aren't in a good position to get an 'impact' player in the summer. When we get someone, then we have to wait another couple of games for them to get integrated and for the people who are injured or on national team duty to come back and gel so we can make a final push....etc, etc, etc. I'm sad that the Front Office hasn't learned that lesson after 5-6 years of this....
Makes sense to me that he's in the wall, McCarthy is a pretty weak man-marker. He's very effective in the air in the run of play, but on set pieces, he tends to get jostled out of position too easily. Shalrie is still the guy I want marking the most dangerous opponent.