Post-match: DC vs. Toronto

Funny thing is that if you pick and choose a lineup over Olsen's entire reign ... you could actually come up with a reasonably technical starting 11 ... but most of those players weren't valued enough here ...

How about ...

----------------------------------------------HAMID
FRANKLIN--------------DUDAR------------------------JAKOVIC--------------ROCHAT
---------------------------------------------MCCARTY
---------------------------SILVA--------------------------BOSKOVIC
NAJAR-------------------------------------------------------------------------PONTIUS
----------------------------------------------SALIHI

 

Shit dude...don't even joke about that.

 

Maybe the team would be better if we had even more stickies on this board.

 

I know this is unpopular to say, but while Hamid did well on defense, he didnt show a lot of bite on offense. I think we have to bench him.

 

I want to see Doyle. I don't care who sits, but I want him on the pitch, somewhere.

 

What I don't understand is that NONE of these players strengths are being accentuated while ALL of their weaknesses are being exposed. If you want a swan, get a swan. Don't try to make a goose into a swan. We have good players who are being asked (apparently) to do things they can't do. How is that smart? You can't "gel" if you you're asking fish to dunk a basketball.

EJ is good when isolated on a defender, he isolates himself and we don't bother to get him the ball. Espindola is great when pressuring defenses into mistakes. He pressures a turnover, we're not ready or able to exploit it. Silva is great doing quick short passes in space with movement and we freaking isolate him like he's going to dribble himself out of trouble. Defensively, Boz and Parke are great on positioning and playing simple centrally, but we try to get them to cover vast spaces left by wingbacks who do not always come back and honor their marks. Kitchen is AWESOME from 18 to 18, but we ask him to play sweeper in front of a two central defenders covering too much ground. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Deleon is hopeless. NO defensive ability whatsoever, and if he will just cross to goalkeeper or fumble his first touch to the defense, then he's worse than useless, he's a liability. Arnaud is aging badly right in front of our eyes. Etc. Etc. Etc.

TWO SHOTS ON GOAL IN TWO GAMES. DCUSA could coach this team and get them to be more menacing than that. Holy Moly.

This team has strengths, but you wouldn't know it by the drivel they produce. PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS!!!!! That is soccer 101. If this can't or won't do that, then it is the head biting the body into submission.

Very frustrating day. Sorry for the Caps lock mania.

 

Tell us how you really feel.

 

It's the coach, stupid.

 

DCU fans who still support Olsen seem to me like that guy who cut off his penis to spite his wife

 

I got this on the HD channel; but the SD channel worked fine. Later, the same thing happened when I tried to watch a different match; so I went to the DirecTV website and had them re-send the receiver's authorizations; and then the DK HD channels worked fine. They say try that, or resetting the receiver, or both.

 

Many have good intentions or they are thinking practically about contractual issues or what not. To me, I am not mad at fans that support Olsen, just sad, because I get that they just genuinely want a player they liked watching years ago to continue to succeed. His legacy, however, is dead dead dead. He's one of the worst coaches in MLS history, full stop. It will take him 10, 20 or 30 years to recover from where he is and that simply won't happen. We did him or he did himself a great disservice by continuing into this season and now we're going through the 'Olsen doldrums' again:

2013: "I'm not sure what we can do for next game. Got any ideas?" - question to NBC journalist at postgame
2014: "We've got to find a way to do it. Other teams that are new and not yet gelling are doing it...Hopefully we can score some goals this coming week." Ben Olsen on scoring goals

Let's just post all the horrible Olsen post-game quotes:

B.O.: "The balance of play was safe and we were keeping it, and we had some good attacks and rhythm. Again, there are a lot of positives in this game but it still hurts as a loss."

1 shot on goal, 0 cross efficiency, no threats is the reality.

B.O.: "Yes but it still doesn’t feel great. It’s a loss but I think when I look back I think we will see that we really took some steps forward. We didn’t struggle. There are the things we worked on in the past few weeks and we implemented a lot of that."

We didn't struggle?

 

WOW, shit man, he's completely out of the reality...

 

If we didn't struggle this match, heaven help us when we do struggle.

 

I believe Winoman has provided our new tag line!

 

So I can reset the receiver/reauthorize and it will show the SD match when I DVRd the HD channel?

Thx,

Jay!

 

Ah. Missed your mention that you were talking about a recording, not watching live, sorry.

 

I thought it was going to be a DC United broadcast. It was the standard MLS Live stream of TSN. TSN is Canadia's espn so it was well-done, but I expected elementary school AV club repackaging. Was MLS Live blacked out for people outside the DC area?

 

Nope. But I sure as hell wish it was.

 

Wow.....this game was sooooo boring. I turned it on mute and put music on instead--and found myself just not caring anymore.

This team stinks at generating any 'fun' offensive plays. We have nothing.

We simply need a capable offensive mid who can actually link, hold and bleed pressure to make holes for other folks.

Silva can't do that neither can any of our forwards or midfielders.

 

I could get behind this:

Espindola-----------EJ------------Doyle
------DeLeon-------------Silva----------
------------------Kitchen-----------------

Of course this would be ceding the wings, but I don't know how that's different than now. Arnaud just isn't up to snuff, imo, and DeLeon doesn't want to play wide (the second half saw him meandering around until he got central and came alive - sort of). I know Doyle will appreciate the opportunity and put in the work. Since it seems Olsen wants the fullbacks to provide the width, at least there will be more players up top to get on the end of things, and if played correctly, EJ will have people around him to combine with.
I'm grasping at straws here b/c I'm having a really difficult time finding a group of players that will be a threat. This team has to find some goals or the best backline in the world isn't going to make much difference.

 

This is the worst thing ... I'm no fair weather fan by any means ... I mean I go out of my way to watch preseason streams ...

But it's hard to be invested in this team when they play. They inspire nothing. This is the most detached I've ever been from caring about results except maybe towards the end of 2010 ... Losing is one thing ... but not offering anything that even resembles attacking ambition is another thing.

This game I found myself more interested in what Jonathan Osorio was doing since he's on my fantasy team ...

 

It's hard. The team offers so little in the way of good, solid play, you're left waiting for scraps. They always seem outnumbered and they play so very slowly. Hell, they aren't having any fun, why should the fans be expected to enjoy it?

 

Respectfully, that doesnt look any better than what we did today, which was to pinch in, try to shut down Bradley and pray their wings didnt burn us. Olsen's strategy is almost entirely reliant on passes up on the wings so doing something like a 4-1-2-3 means even less production.

 

My name is Mike and I'm a Unitedaholic. I hit rock bottom last year. I expected things would improve when I stopped having expectations and my team actually made some improvements, but they didn't and I haven't either.

I'll be in lot 8 next week. Please hit me in the head with a rock.

 

Even less production? I'm morbidly curious to see what that would even look like.