When: Saturday 19 March 3:00 pm EDT Who: DC United at Toronto Football Club Where: BMO Field Forecast: showers 11° (C, eh) How to watch, if not visiting the Great White North: NBC Sports Washington, TeleXitos, or the team website locally Taxi hasn't arrived yet, Estrada is out, Canouse - maybe. Toronto has some injury and suspension absences, too, and they just traded away Lawrence. Bradley uses some old man tricks to torture our midfield, and Toronto scores 2...but so do United getting a point with a tie on a messy, rainy afternoon by the shores of Lake Ontario.
do you drive red barchetta on that trip to YYZ? And I will go with that 2-2 score - when its raining we traditionally score (at least we used to...)
All road games are tough. Hopefully, we can at least escape with a point. The loss of Paredes has been huge. He took on players 1v1 and the forced opposing defenses to adjust. This created more space for other attackers. He was not always successful, but he was fouled a lot. This resulted in more free kicks for Gressel and more yellow cards on defenders. With his loss, we have not generated enough attacking threat on the left. As a result, the opposition can focus on Gressel and Najar on the right. Since we do not seem to have a #8 that is a legit scoring threat, working box to box through the middle and making dangerous late runs into the final 1/3, Losada has to find a way to get more out of the left side to create more space for all of our attackers. I suspect the only other alternative is to take more chances with the high press and try to create more turnovers in their half. This might be too risky for a road game. Vamos United!!
Holy amateur hour, Batman! The audio on the pregame is bloody awful - stadium noise is even overlaid on the commercials! WTF?!?!?!
Starting lineup looks about like what we’d predicted - Canouse and Djeffal in midfield, Robertha, Kamara and Flores across the top. Otherwise unchanged.
Nice! When Kamara blew that opening chance, I was concerned, but that serve was exquisite - right where Canouse needed it.
Canouse - good on the goal, else just ok at best Robertha - bad Flores - bad Djeffal - Ok at times, he's making long balls and lateral balls that actually get to his own players, but his style of play/passing never leads to anything dangerous for a reason. He's not ready yet and talking him up endlessly isn't going to change that. Kamara - bad Najar - generally good Hamid - not enough data Smith - ok Gressel - ok Hines-Ike - ok Birnbaum - ok Toronto has 60% of possession and every corner and is winning on most relevant stats. We have more shots but mostly dingers and misplayed passes. Toronto stinks so either we're going to lose shape in defense and let in a simple poacher's goal or we're going to get a call or two in or near the box and Penmara will emerge from hibernation to win the game. That's how it will play out IMO.
Toronto hasn’t won in forever. Glad we’re able to help them. Losada won’t be around long at this rate. Worst team in the league and all the dynamism from last year is gone.
Gressel should give up the sport. He is pure trash. This team is cooked. Our upcoming schedule will expose this roster even more. I guess it could be worse. We could be Miami.
We were predicted to be bad by every commentator for a reason. The first two games gave fuel to hope that maybe we’d overcome all of the expectations and pull through by effort alone. Everything is playing out just as expected except for injuries which we have thankfully avoided so far.
I wish you would explain how Gressel, who was third in all of MLS last season in both assists and key passes, became trash literally overnight. Yes, he may not be up to last year's standard but might that have something to do with who his passes go to and what they do with them?
Oh well. That sucked. I also had that sinking feeling once Kamara and Robertha missed those early chances. Regardless of how early the opportunities come, you cannot squander golden scoring chances on the road. There were some small positives: 1) I thought that coordination and spacing between the lines in the high press looked better during most of the game. They did a better job clogging passing lanes and this resulted in turnovers or long 50/50 balls out of the back during significant portions of the game. 2) The attack was more balanced during most of the first half. Flores favored the left side and there were moments of decent link up play between Smith, Flores, and Robertha. The goal came off the cross from Robertha on the left. These were baby steps. Let's hope for continued improvement next week.
Don’t ask me! He has been terrible in every match. His crosses are awful, he is out of position time and time again, and he looks slow to me. You cannot deny that he’s been very, very poor. The rest of the team was extremely poor today, too. Djeffal was our best player, which says a lot about this team.