- who is this kid in nets for United, Cupcaken, Kremlin, Kempin? - I guess this Taxi kid is a DP, or at least he looks like a DP - solid job defense - I guess you can win with occasional high press, versus 90 minutes (did you notice that Mr. Losada?)
Lol, we go 3-2 at home vs a horrendous NE team and suddenly Shawn is out here thinking the whole ship is righted. We forfeited the entire second half and if they had anyone competent they'd have tied.
It's almost like we didn't batter 2 terrible teams at the start of the season. This is somehow a new era.
Would you have preferred we lost tonight? I don't think anyone is implying we are top of the table and running away with the Supporter's Shield and MLS Cup. Be happy tonight and shit on the team if they lose next week. FFS.
No, I expected we win tonight. Thats what teams do in MLS against bottom level opponents at home. It tells us nothing.
It occurs to me that Flores has bad eyesight. Seriously. He might need some glasses -- thick ones, too. It's the only explanation for someone of his "talent" making such horrendous "passes."
I was only able to see the highlights, and it seems to me that Taxi had more positive impact on the team in those four minutes than Flores has had since arriving.
It was VERY noticeable. The stadium was quiet as hell for the most part (although noise was made after the goals, and occasional chants in the 2nd half). Damn Flores looked useless (and honestly Estrada didn't look much better).
Taxi was great and a joy to watch. Also Kempin deserves credit for having a great game especially with all the shots he had to endure in the second half.
No drums makes a huge difference. It hasn’t been that quiet since the opener in 2018. The Eagles had originally said they were on board for the boycott, but they showed in decent numbers and they tried to sing, but they don’t have the drums or enough people who know the words to get something going. All they did was get a couple rounds of the wave going. Flores was poor, but he was an order of magnitude better than other recent games and he was far more active which just kisses me off to the high heavens. And the thing I really don’t get is anyone can look at the difference in his play and be ok with it, that he’s been mailing it in for a while. He’s a GD DP and been a passenger for this many games. For $1.6M plus his fee, the guy owes it to the club, his teammates and the fans to leave it out there on the field every night. Everyone has bad nights or slumps but the conscious lack of effort is an unequivocal nonstarter for me.
Taxi was the main story to be sure, but let's give the much-abused Jon Kempin credit for some excellent saves, a la Bill Bill Hamid. Even Hamid wouldn't have saved NE's first goal - the shooter was totally unmarked and fired a laser into the corner. But I am concerned about how many SOGs New England put up, especially in the second half. It was just like the previous match, except that Kempin saved all but one. We have to get better.
The situation isn’t as dire as some would have it. If Kamara doesn’t get kicked out of the Austin game, DC is 4-3 and sitting in third with a game in hand on most of the rest of the team.
I loved the win, but NE had a huge edge in every statistical category - possession; shots, SOG; passing accuracy, et. al.. There is still a lot of work to do.
Didn't watch the game, obviously, as I'm in Europe at the moment. But don't obsess over statistics versus results. Last night in the Lucca-Pistoia match, Lucca was on the front foot early, pressing everywhere and was rewarded with a well struck goal. Pistoia grabbed one back before halftime on a superb free kick over the wall and into the upper 90. After the break, Lucca faded, stopped pressing and Pistoia got on the front foot. Then, really against the run of play, shambolic defending by Pistoia led to 3 unmarked Lucca players in front of goal 2-1. After many subs, a little used Lucca midfield dribbled through Pistoia's midfield, ignored a wide open flank player with an unimpeded path to goal and, instead, cut inside into traffic, was dispossesed but had the ball pop back up to him and he scored to make it 3-1. Pistoia got one back on a free kick that bounced around and deflected into the goal off a Lucca player. It ended 3-2, but in the second half, Pistoia, statistically, was the better team. They still lost.
Whew, some serious doom and gloom here. 1- Taxi is legit and fun to watch 2- Durkin back is a plus 3- Kempin had a good game 4- absence of drums was noticeable but stadium had its loud moments , and for the casual fan I don't think most had any idea why the drums were missing. Don't think it was a very effective protest. Some "Kasper out!" signs and chants might have been nice. I would have joined in from my non-supporters section seats.
To quote the great philosopher Montgomery Scott, “And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.” In the last two games we’ve had one good half each followed by relatively unsuccessful attempts to pack it in and escape. AT HOME. And that’s the best we’ve looked all season. What happens when we take this $hit$how on the road? Oh, and we’re 0-3 against teams above the playoff line. So what exactly is it about this team that’s supposed to inspire confidence? They’ve got a lot of convincing to do. That said, I’m really glad they won. I’m just not fooled by one pretty unimpressive result against a bad team.
I was talking about Tuesday night in USOC when he couldn't trap balls, couldn't complete short passes, and barely moved faster than a corpse against a 4th division team along with his other shorter appearances. Yea, I'll second that and the more I see and read, the story that Goff, Pablo and almost all of the soccer media are perpetuating for the team combined with what I have seen doesn't jive. Was he a difficult personality behind closed doors? Probably. Was he an obsessive taskmaster? Certainly, but look at the coaches of your dynasty teams in any sport. When you see big name, big money guys like Hamid & Gressell coming out like they did, saying what they said about making them better, that's not the sound of guys in a lost locker room. Matter of fact, if it were a lost locker room, I'd expect some chatter about guys getting their heads straight, players only meetings because those things always leak. These weren't guys who were bench players who benefited from Losada's arrival, they're the established stars and leaders. Did some guys like Flores not like having to work that hard? For sure. And seeing Flores upping his game once Losada was fired pisses me off. He should go for that alone. I think it came down to him pressing the team to spend at a time when the team wasn't getting results. I think the results offered the club an easy out on what was only going to become a bigger and bigger problem, which was the club matching Losada's and the fanbase's expectations for results. I really have to wonder what was promised during the hiring process. A transfer budget sure seems like the kind of thing I'd be asking about as an incoming coach and wanting to get fairly ironclad promises on. This is the one dissenting opinion I have seen in regard to Losada's firing. It was funny, Matthew Doyle was talking about how Berschott fell off a cliff before Losada left, but when I looked at Berschott's results, they had a tough December losing 4 straight, including 3 away games where they only won 4 games all year. And at the time that Losada left, they were only 2-3 pts out of a Europa League spot. They were very much in the mix after a 4 game losing streak, that's not a cliff. At the time, I wondered why a guy with a chance to play UEL was coming here. They're likely to be relegated this season. Doyle of course didn't respond to having his "facts" questioned.
The east is both mediocre and very flat. Even the teams at the bottom aren't atrocious. I expect NE (if they have a real goalie) to be fighting for a playoff spot. Philadelphia is a clearly good team, but that's about it. DC will not have to be particularly good to make the playoffs. I saw glimpses of a team that could easily make the playoffs vs. Austin and vs. NE in the first half. The question will be whether they can finish off games on a semi-consistent basis. And can they stay healthy.