Looks like another year of uninspired, apathetic play, what a massive surprise lol, who could have seen this coming?
I am probably getting into the confirmation bias space with Gruezo where I just notice the bad things, but there were a few plays that really stood out to me. The last one, fairly late in the game, he intercepted the ball just in our attacking half of midfield, or should I say the ball came to him, and there were several attacking players that were options for a pass. He had a guy coming up behind him but for some reason, instead of passing forward to the numerous attacking options he had, he kicked the ball behind him over his head towards our own goal! Not only that, but that pass resulted in a turnover, and now Dallas is heading the other way and he's behind the play. :facepalm I would like to see what we look like with Morales in his spot.
Luchi looked pretty distressed / frustrated in the postgame, and either he only took 3 questions (one in Spanish) or the Aftershock guys got there late. He was cordial enough and thoughtful and trying to stay positive all that as usual, but you could see the distress on his face. Luchi is on at about 22:45.
When you have 20 things from a game, in the post-game thread everyone can comment on 5 of those things where they can say "this was just what I suspected would happen"...
Hopefully not too Crouchy. When he made his big switch to Liverpool he didn't score in his first 19 games, over 24 hours of playing time! He's big, he's red, his feet stick out of bed! Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch!
Dallas was missing 5 of their starters, 3 of which are DP's, and they still played us off the field. Same as it ever was.
I'd say we played ourselves off the field. Came out raring to play, scored our goal, and reverted to a mix of inept defense and halfhearted offense.
If we hadn’t given up that dumb goal at the very end I think the narrative about the game would have been at least semi-positive or neutral. We played OK. A point in the road. Most of the new guys looked promising. But it’s the nature of fandom for the evaluation of the entire game to be strongly shaped by what happened at the very end. Illogical, because what happened in minutes 0-93 is what happened in minutes 0-93 regardless of what happened in minute 94, but fandom is by definition not logical so there you have it.
My family can back me up on this: when we got into stoppage, I said "someone is going to score, and they'll win the game" -- our team was hustling then, and I was still hopeful. But yeah, it's probably not as bad as most of us feel.
People poke fun at it, but I think xG is a reasonable way to evaluate how well we did irrespective of results. It was 2.4 for Dallas, 1.7 for us, so not terrible, for a road game. 1.7 is better for us - last year we were often under 1, especially for road games. But 2.4 for them is pretty bad for our defense. BTW probably about 1.5 of that 1.7 xG is due to Benji's shots.
Albeit facetiously, out of all the former players, I think Scott Sealy’s name has been mentioned most on the boards since the Quakes re-inception in 2008. Now his son comes back to haunt us 12 years later. What a joke! Anyway, I really like the new, rivived old NASL Quakes colors, and logo. Please go back to RED, BLACK & WHITE permanently!
Yes people, illogical. Leitch needs more time before he can be expected to have our team ready to go on opening day, he's only been with the team for 15 years. Logically we almost earned a point against a Dallas team that had none of their DP's available.
Pretty "meh" and about what I expected, except I actually expected to end in a draw. I thought, surely this won't happen 2 years in a row. Yep, it did. To add insult to injury, my shiny new jersey is delayed with no ETA We have a decent number of homegrowns - where are Medina and tsakiris? Don't we also have other young players who can stir things up? Like I said in preseason, if we're going to be mediocre, let's at least be young, exciting, and mediocre.
Tsakaris is injured. We don't have other young players ready for first team duty, from what I can see. I think we risk another Cade scenario if we try to rush them in too soon.
Dallas had none of their DPs but we also didn’t have 3 of our projected starters starting. It’s early in the season - almost every team is not yet at full strength due to transfers not fully integrated into the team, etc. But sure Dallas was missing more than us. They were also playing at home, where MLS teams usually dominate.
Verhoeven can contribute this year but there are 2 good players in front of him. He’ll probably get some minutes this year. He started a game or 2 in preseason.
everyone was available as starter or sub, except our new CB. we saw four of our new players. granted, its a small sample size, but we weren't much better with those guys on the field, not yet anyway. maybe with time.