Is Puldio, flying to LA from Vegas, after a month in which he played a total of about a half of football, fresh or dis-spirited? When he returned last time, he seemed beaten down a bit by the nats experience. Maybe getting 15 minutes in the final will have energized him a bit? I hope so. In terms of wear and tear, he should, I would suggest, be okay to play Wednesday. But mentally, who knows. As for buiso, same deal after 30 minutes. But it's probably unlikely he ever plays for us again. the move hasn't been officially announced yet, so he is our player. OTOH, if the reports of $11m are correct, an injury would be seen as a costly move. Is there any word on whether he's joining us in LA, or on his way to Venice?
If Busio's deal is going through, he's not playing for us again. That's a very common contingent to these things, so I would be shocked if it weren't in place. I assumed they would wait till after the Gold Cup to finalize, but who knows. Fingers crossed Pulido comes back angry and intent. I think we could coast some nice wins off a truly furious striker, haha. Anything but dispirited or dejected.
I think Pulido will be available, maybe not start, but I think he'll be in the 18. Busio won't be wearing an SKC jersey again/for a while.
I assume you're right on Busio, why announce him when he's with the nats and won't show up for a week or two. I'm just finding the lack of an announcment today a bit odd (over here, it's late afternoon). As for Pulido, man, that would be the best case scenario for us. As a general rule, I don't really care for nats play. As for this, specific situation, it really pisses me off that Tata keeps taking him and not playing him..
If he'd only played 15 minutes for us this weekend, I'd expect him to want to start. A sub appearance would be cool, though.
True if he only played 15 for us. But PV may want to evaluate more of where he's at, give him a bit more of a break to be ready for this stretch of games.
That was a good half of soccer. Need to clean the defense just a little bit but even though LAFC look dangerous to get 1, we look just as dangerous to get a 4th.
It's amusing to me that it's Ted Lasso night at the LAFC game. Did they think about this when they scheduled it, b/c Sudeikis went out of his way to include KC references in the show. What did they think would happen?
At half, Im liking this more physical version of #54 in the midfield. This has been Walters best game. I dont buy that best XI stuff. And Elie reminds us why he played a zillion games in a row at the 6 for us. This game is calling for Espinoza to come on and crunch some people. Which probably means Kinda comes off at some point? I don't think we are done seeing goals unfortunately.
Bradley made some dumb tactical decisions in this one. Game is wide open. Luchi made us breakdown a low(ish) block which we didn't do well against. Tactics, they're not overrated.
Yep, we continue to play really well against 3 man back lines, it's been that way basically since the stadium opened. I know that's the trendy thing in the game now, but KC still exposes the space between the lines and between the 3 CBs in that formation.
I mean up 3-0 at the half you don't have to push things that much. They didn't need to attack, they forced LA to come at them. LA had a couple chances but overall 2nd half was just about containing.
I'm all for shutting it down in a game, but only letting in one goal was super flattering. Some truly hilarious finishing from LA. I can sympathize though. Especially once Walter and Kinda were off the field, the midfield looked much too soft again. That let LA expose the shit out of our fullbacks, particularly Martins, who stepped up at really poor times I felt.
I’m sorry, but Wilson Harris has no business being on the field. Maybe he is out there because SKC has nobody else to play that position. I understand he is a boy among men, but then again he looks like it.
it's impressive to win 4-1 away and still have such mixed emotions about it. if their finishing wasn't so poor, the chances they created could've easily led to us blowing a 4-0 lead and turning it into a draw or a loss even (is that a double blown tire? a broken comb?). seriously, they had at least four golden chances that they should've put away. we're lucky they only converted one. and what the hell are our outside backs doing still pushing up the field in the 80th minute? for as good and clinical as we were in the final third, we were equally as poor in our own third... we just weren't punished for it. also, i'm not gonna say anything negative about khiry this game. not because he doesn't deserve it, but because he took a proper one for the team tonight and got absolutely destroyed by their out-of-control gk. as far as i'm concerned, he deserves an assist on pulido's goal.
From a stats perspective, looking at the game as a whole isn't really very telling. LAFC controlled 55 percent of possession, but we were controlling possession by a slightly higher margin until the 60th minute, at which point we subbed and bunkered and conceded possession. LAFC controlled up to 77 percent of possession during the 5 minute intervals after it was 0-4. Before that point, we'd played them off the field (the evidence might be 4 goals, and looked very much good for that lead). I get the angst on here that LAFC could have come back and tied this thing, with all their chances, but jeebus, we were up 4 at the 60th minute, and they were not putting their shots on targets. Had Melia failed to make all of the great saves he made in this game, the final score would have been, uhm, 1-4. He had to make zero saves. Put another way, if we'd decided during that barrage of shots to place a traffic cone in goal, the score would have been the same (though the pass backs might have been troublesome). The closest anyone came to scoring on Melia, outside of their late goal, was Ilie's odd pass back to an empty net (which the British announcer I was listening to made a point of noting that "even at 35, he had the quickness to reach that ball." Sheesh. This game is also the sort that really exposes the xG stat. True, LAFC won the xG battle, 2.3-1.6. But, and I do think this matters, at the 60th minute, when the actual score was 4-0, the xG was 1.1-1.6 in our favor. at that point, the way pretty much every game ever has gone, the team with 4 bunkers and forces the other team to prove they are capable of scoring four. We've been on the other side of this sort of game way too often to think that we were lucky to win. We never think we were unlucky to lose in the other direction. We think, man, we have to put shots in the back of the net. it is, after all, the only stat that really matters (well, that and red cards). Individually, Ilie was our fulcrum tonight, connecting with being found by 8 teammates. Wlater completed 94 percent of his passes. he won three tackles, didn't lose one, had an int, had 8 recoveries and one clearance. he passing map was an impressive full field between the 18s display, just like his best 11 map but not as much stuff because, well, 70 v 90. Ilie also had 2 clearances, 8 recoveries, a won tackle, two ints, two blocks.and completed 85 percent of his passes. his passing map looks like that of a very traditional 6, very heavily weighted to the defensive end. In the end, great score, great win, and we actually got to really rest important players for enough time to make a difference for our next in this tight stretch of games.
One of our biggest concerns entering the season was the slowness of our wings. We saw that last night. I hope we didn't lay some film in the middle of a 0-4 drubbing of LAFC that can be exploited by the league. I admit, that's a very dour comment for a team that is top of the west with a game in hand, having recently won at the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th place teams in the conference.
I assume you're talking about Zusi and Martins, and not Salloi (who was beating folks with pace) and Shelton (who has issues, but speed is not among them). They aren't burners, but they've got practical speed. As for our wide defenders, I'd suggest that anyone in MLS who has yet to realize that Zusi has pace issues to exploit will probably continue to ignore that fact. I mean, the info has been out there since, what, 2010? To be fair, he works really hard.