Willl\is had no chance goal Guastatoya nobody in midfiled can hold possession Elis just continually turning the ball over
Extra time or right to PKs if it stays this way? TBH, I was watching college basketball and hockey and just turned it back
out of the fire now and into the Tigres frying pan they will destroy us Glad Manotas came on and looked so good. Shows you how slow Pena is - we would have been better to keep the striker we drafted last year instead of spending more money on a weak foreign player
Tigres gonna go in raw. That is a seriously intimidating side. An XI almost full of South American and Mexican internationals... while we're rolling out a far far inferior side especially in defense.
Just got back from the gane, what a night out for our Dynamo! I told you Westie that them Guatemalans were gonna show in numbers and they did! Us in the North End drowned out their jeers and the like but the non segregated seating had our FO seat Guastatoya hinchad all over our stadium. Which had consequences as some of the young men hinchas in their green n yellow gear were giving the bird to Houston hinchas in the hinchada and the atmosphere got even more tense. Then they score and it got real tense all around our ground. I was about to have a heart attack, then we scored and that sure felt like a million Christmas mornings!!! Haha! Glad our boys saw out the match. Pena, it appears, is just to slow and poor first touch for MLS. Beaz was boss once again. Elis and Monatas changed everything. On to face Tigres. First leg is at BBVA! DALE DYNAMO!!!
How many Guatemalans showed? 500? Let’s not make it sound like it was the Merseyside Derby last night. And zero will be back for another Dynamo game. And I’ve not seen an attendance figure from last night - not even the usual “tickets distributed” figure
There were probably more than 500 Westie. With the rain delay and terrible weather, a crappy opponent, a work day / school night, and a home team that is not very good = low attendance. Why would we expect otherwise? The Dynamo are lucky to have El Batallon and Texian army to drown out visitors to our stadium; otherwise crickets.
There will be more Tigres fans than Dynamo fans in the stadium next Tuesday for sure. With 4 games in 12 days the Dynamo could end up with bad results in all of them. That is why you saw Manotas and Elis on the bench. The key will be Cabezas because Vera and Ceren just aren't that good.
Midfield was just shameful in how many passes they sent directly to an opposing player. I knew that was Ceren’s specialty, but Vera seems to enjoy it almost as much. Struna/DeLaGarza are concerning especially without Cabezas in the lineup to shield them. It’s still early, but I can see a future where Struna and Vera flop which combined with Lundkvist means that Jordan will be riding three high profile failures in a row. Hard to see him hanging around after that, although maybe he wins goodwill with Brener if he can sell some guys for a big fee. If he goes I have to wonder whether we’d hire a new GM or go the route we did with Canetti and put a low profile cap management guy under Cabrera and reunify the head coach/GM role.
this made me LOL. you know what, so far i like this dude. i think we need to get to MLS game 10 before he gets comfortable. its already a good sign that he looks better than Leonardo and Machado ever did with only 2 real games against a Guatemalan team and a handful of scrimmages. Lundqvist on the other hand. how telling was it that he didn't make the starting lineup nor bench for a game where Wilmer went second team heavy. if he's not starting or benching on saturday that's a bad sign.
I got that they played an A/B lineup to save minutes on the A team for the weekend. It makes superficial sense, but RSL beat us both games last season -- including here -- and CCL right now is basically our USOC. In fact, the RSL audience would likely be a captive STH one anyway, and you know Tigres will draw fans. So it's not even the feathering our nest move. And then there is my cynical opinion we set up a team to compete in CCL a couple rounds and not really MLS. OK, stick to the script. Fully play out the strategy at max effort. We did this some with USOC last year. It would become obvious that was a key goal. But then we'd field the A team for some 2 games that week MLS fixture, 10 points below the red line. Dude, if you're basically going all in on something, stick to it. Don't play the As away and then come home and squeak with the Bs. To be fair, it worked. But barely. We treated it like a USOC early rounder where we just try to stay in the game and maybe get a goal from the Bs and if we need to the key players cameo in late. Give or take a save here or there -- and Willis had a decent night, credit where it's due -- that could have backfired or instead been a LAFC or LAG type comeback game, one way or the other.
Manotas had a good game and what I appreciate is he is a rare player here who continues up his growth curve. His touch improves and improves. Compare to, say, Elis. 99% of the players who come here are either good day 1 or not and don't really progress, and that includes the people who will be foundational in our ring of honor or whatever we call it. I am glad to see someone flourish here. Hairston needs to hit early balls and quit pretending he's Elis taking people on. He gets the space but then tries to dribble instead of cross with the separation. I would also like to see him played at mid and back to get the best players on the field and the rubbish benched. Figueroa is better setting people up with the diagonals than some mids are at their jobs. Ceren is ineffective either way and it's pecking order bull that he's out there instead of someone else. What practical substance is there he can play. It's perseveration. You'd probably get better play in either direction from a nominal attacking player. But this is like Machado, he thinks he likes him, he thinks we need to field a team that looks a certain way, and this is the next man up on some misconceived depth chart that doesn't seem to reconcile with actual field play. On Struna, I told you so. And CB is a position where "he looked good for 70-80 minutes" doesn't cut it. You get paid to do 90. And since we rotely play him RCB with AJ RB he has no wide cover. Why don't we play him left side and wedge him between Beasley and Figueroa. Was there ever any word on Cabezas' prognosis? The fall off from him to journeyman rubbish is too dramatic, we saw this last year. People give me grief over calling it a journeyman team but that's the sort of thing I am talking about. or the B team forwards who couldn't do anything to a Guatemalan team. Or the old backs who ship a goal at home to a mediocre opposition. There is a modicum of talent on the team but not much. You get below that surface layer and that's a lot of what defines our seasons. If the bigs get hurt they have to play every night. Or they are the ones we have to field to chase a result with 20 minutes left.
Starting XI is decent.. the defense is a bit yikes ... AJ DeLeGarza - Struna - Figueroa - Beasley is pretty bad.. the real killer is the team has almost no depth. That was on full display last night. An attacking trio of Quioto - Pena - McNamara is just shambolic.
Did anyone else notice that when Elis came on for Quioto, Quioto didn't go to the bench sideline to exit by the 4th official and go to the bench, but just walked off the far sideline and immediately went down the tunnel. Don't know that I've ever seen that for a non-injured player, or if you should read anything into it.