Weird that there's still two goalies on the bench (and no Miller...anyone hear what's up with him?) but the starting lineup is unchanged from the Santos beatdown. Enow is on the bench. Your Starting XI 🦅 pic.twitter.com/siPBOnCmYP— D.C. United (@dcunited) August 9, 2024
Field looks almost nice, huge seams everywhere. Really does need 2 more weeks. About 1200 folks here to watch it.
Have tonsay, it's a BEAUTIFUL night to watch a game: nice breeze, low humidity, phenomenal sunset. Game sux, as we r playing down to our opponent, and stroud got sucked into being stoopid. But a nice freaking late summer evening
Dajome with a *bad* whiff on the back post -- if he gets anything on that back across the middle, it might be tied.
Cool. Now take the next few weeks and get the team onto a single page with the new additions, rest for the olds, and make a good end of season run. If we can sneak into the playoffs, we could win the whole damn thing!
Rodriguez has improved quite a bit from his JAG return. Probably 8x-10x overpaid, but at least he has played better as the season has progressed.
No MLS team is getting a foreign player like Rodriguez for $100-150k. Is he overpaid at $1.1M/$1.36M? Possibly - we've never seen him given long enough of a run to see if he's worth that money. Would I want him to re-sign here at $500k? 100% yes. Is that enough to make it happen? Probably not.
Klich and Rodriguez more or less play the same position. One of them will be gone in 2025 and the remaining one probably will be on a lower salary. In some ways it would make sense to keep Rodriguez at around 600K, dump Klich and hope that one of Pirani, Enow or Hopkins steps up. The one player who is utterly replaceable is Dajome.
I like Klich and everything he’s done here but if came down to him or Rodriguez at a pay cut, I’d take Rodriguez next year. More versatile and probably a lower base salary. I have high hopes for Enow. Relatively unknown but looks to have the tools to be a good destroyer as a number 6. Could see him and Peltola forming a nice partnership next year.
He stood out on the 2022 team for his work rate and his instinct for getting in behind the defense which no one on that team could see or anticipate. Sitting where where I do, I watched him make more runs than I could count in behind and getting zero service. Maybe its a difference in the systems, but more than anything, I think its the first year back from a knee injury, he definitely doesn't have the same kind of burst he had in 2022. Everyone says it takes 2 years to get back. I felt pretty good about him at $1M after he joined us. He was the guy my son was getting on the back of his jersey, right up until the point he blew out his knee. Since then, its a mixed bag, coming back from the injury, totally different coach & system, we're not a very good team. After Benteke, our next leading scorer is surprisingly not Owen Goal. Its Jajome with 3 according to the MLS site. He was a Losada purchase if I remember correctly. I'd trust McKay to judge what he's worth going forward and see how he better fits into the system.