Horrible defending. Essentially unmarked on the pass and unmarked man inside the box for the header. Bad.
Bad players, bad soccer. 3 weeks to prepare and they play like that. I don't want to hear anything from Ashton, only I stink, my team stinks, no excuses.
If ever there was a walking billboard for promotion/relegation, it’s this game. Both teams deserve to be in the drop zone. My hope is that everyone connected with this farce gets their walking papers. I skipped the first half, shouldn’t have bothered with the second. It’s just not good enough, as the results clearly show.
My favorite comment from social media: "I forgot we even had a game today, I was watching the Capital Cup DVD"
That was painful, but offers clarity. This team is simply not good enough. There seems to be a complete absence of tactics and chemistry. When looking at distribution/transition play and interplay in the attacking 1/3, we literally seem worse than a pick up team. Problems are abundant, but hopefully a lot can be remedied by signing 3-4 players early in the transfer window. Master of the obvious. We need a DP attacking midfielder (Flores replacement/upgrade). Unlike Flores, he has to be able to cope with the physical play in the middle of the field and also have better passing vision. Our central midfielders seem worse than average. They are OK from a defensive standpoint. Unfortunately, they are not particularly good in transition and they are not effective in contributing in the attacking 1/3 either. We need an experienced Dmid with a higher soccer IQ and better passing ability than our current options (even Moreno and Felipe were better than our current options). The striker pool needs more variety. Estrada, Robertha, and Kamara are all shades of the same player. So far, Kamara is the best of the three. Ideally, we sign a more versatile DP that forces all three out or to the bench. At minimum, one of them needs to go and we need a new striker that offers a different skill set (speed, ability to create on the dribble, or ability to create assists). The left side of the attack needs to be revamped. We need a quality winger or wing back as an actual replacement for Paredes who could push Smith to the bench. IMO, these are the minimum needed to compete in the final 1/3 of the season.
The Fire were terrible, if Gressel had even an average game DC comes away with points. Evidence of the Fire's futility was the fact that DC is an atrocious passing team, yet still fell into chance after chance they promptly squandered. Bottom of the barrel MLS is a really bad entertainment product. When I feel like I'd rather watch a high school match, it's bad.
Tough to watch. 17 goals on the season, 16 come from "forwards." Only a Canouse header from any of the other seven field positions (and that came back in March). The goal of a 3-4-3 shouldn't be to put all of your offense in the front three players, right? Remember back when Birnbaum was a threat in the air for us?
This team was 30 bad minutes (come from in-front losses over two games) from being first in the East when Losada was fired. They're just playing rutterless soccer now, and the form of most of the guys is in the toilet.
D.C. United off target in loss at Chicago as winless streak hits five Flores, who was scheduled to return to Washington on Saturday from Peruvian national team duty, is being pursued by Mexican club Atlas, while Yow, 19, might end up with Belgium’s Westerlo. Asked why the duo weren’t in Chicago, interim coach Chad Ashton said, “Those are questions for Dave Kasper,” United’s president of soccer operations and sporting director. “Overall, I feel very optimistic with how it looked in the second half,” Ashton said. “We’ve got to obviously put that together for an entire 90 [minutes], but it’s good that we got something moving in the right direction.” How on earth was Flores not returning until Saturday while Pedro Gallese was in Doha on Monday and managed a game in New England on Wednesday? And what second half was Ashton watching? Did he think he was coaching Chicago and not DC? Thx, Jay!
That's on Romo. He was cheating badly to his right, and even though the header came in with no power from about 15 yards away, he froze and waved at it. Awkward. This is the first season I can remember since the days of Louis Crayton and Zach Wells where we're losing points and games because our goalies are inferior. That said, Chicago were clearly the better team last night.
We were out at a BBQ and I didn't get home until the middle of the 2nd half and decided not to turn it on after a quick spin through DCU Twitter. Looks like a solid life decision on my part. Correct and he's not going to push Bill for anything. He's not showing any kind of sharpness or focus in his game. 3 weeks off can do that to a keeper, but where is Ashton and the FO with a competitive game or two in this 3 week break? One guy gives a shit about his team, the other doesn't and probably wouldn't be doing any more than light training to preserve his health, which is a definite weak spot for Flores. I hope they slap fragile stickers all over him when they ship him out. I'd hate for him to be returned because they unboxed a broken player who was taken out by the drinks cart on his flight out of DC. I am sure Chad was watching the same kind of second half that led our FO to call this roster a playoff team. Besides, what else can he say? He's auditioning for the job, which he's still got a better than average chance of keeping. If he trashes them, he's failed to prep the team during a 3 week break and he sure doesn't have the nuts to call this roster what it is like Losada did. I don't think I realized how hatable Shaqiri is until I watched him play here a few eons ago at the beginning of the season. I never saw him very much, having not been a follower of any of the teams he played for. The dude is irritating and utterly unlikable. I am sure his teammates love him.