Totally dominant until Losada made the subs that changed the game. You're right, they targeted our left with some speed and that was enough. Rooney had no counter, not sure what the move was there anyway. I liked theTaxi sub, another goal is what they needed but they couldn't pull it off.
Well, after a good. night's sleep, it's clear that Losada outcoached Rooney. My wife and I are sitting in the stands, its 2-0, Montreal has shown nothing and all DCU has to do is keep it compact, don't get stretched and it's 3 points. Instead, the ONCE TONTOS keep pushing forward for a meaningless 3rd goal and get stretched out of position. Losada loves to play turnover and counter, when does that work? When a team pushes up and loses position and shape. After the first Montreal goal, DCU should have packed it in and sealed the deal. Montreal had to attack and with Benteke and Taxi up top, they might have been able to exploit a quick counter as Montreal pushed. Nope, just the same as the first 80 minutes, folks pushing up, exposing a back line lacking overall pace. That's on Rooney and every player out there. They stopped thinking and probably sunk their season. They had two winnable games with a haul of 6 points. Instead they got 1 and now go on the road to Miami and Atlanta. If they get a point out of those two, I will be pleasantly surprised. It has been 16 years since this team has been consistently good, barring a half season of LuchaRoo. DCU and Chicago must be the two most poorly run franchises in MLS.
I'm thinking after the first time Montreal flies down our left to put in a cross to a wide open attacker in the box, Rooney and his staff should of had a word with Santos. After the second time, they should have given him instructions to stay home and defend. After the first goal, the entire team should have been told to hold back and look to exploit any space Montreal was giving up for their attack. Instead Klich is trying to play mind games with their right back, Santos is trying to ensconce himself in the attacking third, O'Brien is providing link up play, Durkin is providing cover but to get the ball he is often the man closest the goalkeeper, and no one was organizing and tracking runners out of midfield...
This team is better than last year's but their ceiling is qualifying for the playoffs. And in their case qualifying means qualifying on the last game of the season.
This is not the kind of game that good teams blow. There's a lot of mixed evidence out there right now. While we dominated large swaths of the game and looked superior, but one break down here and another there just kills you. Looking back at the week prior, the questions about roster rotation for us and our opponents remain. We picked up unlikely pts against opponents who were recovering from prioritizing the Open Cup and a less than fully impressive W against a poor LAG team at home. Someone said we're in the 4th stretch of 3 games in 8 days, over 5 weeks, so maybe that justifies the tanking the Cup, but it's still a bitter pill.
I used to think 5th was the ceiling, now I'm thinking it's more of an "outside looking in" proposition for the playoffs. This mess won't get fixed until Kasper, Mairs and Howe are sacked. And Kaplan lets a new, competent, director of soccer operations use his checkbook. Until then we get coaches on OJT (Olsen and Rooney) and rosters that make no coherent sense. Lucy Rushton must be giggling in her iced tea at this point.
So this was my assessment when the season opened and then we looked like the south end of a northbound water buffalo. Even when the MLS talking heads all called us spoon contenders. I am still not sold on us being anything more than being the last team in the playoffs or the first team to not make it. We've had some junk games, some good looking games against weaker opponents and I am still profoundly of the belief that we're going to hover right around the red line. Even if we make the playoffs and Rooney dances off to another team leaving a hand picked successor, where are we in 2025 with all 3 of our DPs out of contract? No one is going to be in a better place to make ownership spend than Rooney. Whoever he leaves behind will probably be lucky to get a regular paycheck. He sure isn't coercing ownership into acquisitions of the scale of Benteke.
This is a bigger problem than just trying to protect leads. O'Brien should be having more impact on the attack and the game, but he's playing considerably more defense than Santos. You can see the quality in O'Brien's touches and passes/crosses are miles ahead of Santos, but he's rarely getting into the final third. He needs to play wider, or play more like a 10. This was Rooney's take, but no matter how you slice it, Montreal were better than we were last night--period. They had more and better chances, and finished with a 1.3-0.9 advantage in expected goals. Ted's goal was at least as lucky as their 2nd goal. They raced past us in the 2nd half--made us look old and slow. We actually put in a better overall performance against Toronto. O'Brien had an end-of-the-game frustration red card against Cincinnati that was perplexingly deemed a yellow, and the same last night. He's got to watch it.
Rooney’s tactics in the second half were idiotic. Why press a team that has zero capacity to beat you with build up if you’re compact? Instead, he left DC constantly exposed at the back. Beyond that, it often looked like he was playing a back 4, with Santos dropping to left back. It DOES NOT WORK with this team. (Nevermind the question of why Santos starts - ugh.) Bottom line, Montreal would’ve been no danger if we’d sat back and been compact. Instead, Rooney cocked it up with idiotic tactics.