Westside at the house, not Roberston. Family duties, 9:00 start, long work week. I am sure everyone else here will help us.
Hou - Onstad; Hainault, Boswell, Cameron, Barrett -c; Mullan, Clark, Holden, Davis; Ching, Oduro Hou subs - Hall, Weaver, Ashe, Chabala, Waibel, Cochrane, Robinson Pachuca - Calero -c; Lopez, Munoz, Martinez, Rodriguez; Rojas, Caballero, Montes, Manso; Mendivil, Benitez Pac subs - Cota, Correa, Torres, Gimenez, Alvarez, Godinez, Brambila
Well, DC took care of busines 5-1, Columbus is close, and now let's see if Houston has to touch to make it 3 of 8 for MLS in next year's CCL QFs.
Halftime and we've dominated possession and chances but are down 0-1 thanks to a goal against the run of play by Edgar Benitez. Our shape looks a little odd, with both Barrett and Hainault playing left back. Oduro has been offside 86 or 87 times.
Ching is an absolute none-factor, Houston is playing with 10 man, it's sad, they deserve a goal or two by now.
Quick side comment, on the girl that they just showed on FSC a couple seconds ago: DAYUM! Ok, carry on...
Houston is simply a victim of their own limitations, a great player (Holden) surround by a group of Ok and mediocre players.
So, it seems Houston will have to hope for Pachuca to play with pride to win at home the next game and give the Dynamo a shot to advance with a win. I think Pachuca will play hard if for nothing else to avenge their earlier loss to Arabe, but it's unfortunate to have to count on that.
What a bunch of horse shit tonight. NO finishers up front whatsoever. Oduro is the next to be sold on my list.You can sell me the he had chances excuse, but its been too long with the he had chances excuse. If he cant finish toss his but out with Kamara(who at least bothered to score for us) Clear shots all over the place and NO finishers. Incredible!!!!!!!!!! I still dont understand how we couldnt find Weaver in the second half either. Tonight was beyond frustrating to me because we lost it for ourselves, no refs to blame,or nothing, we just could not finish. I'm off before I blow a gasket.
Kamara must have really been a headache in the locker room to trade him and keep Oduro, who can't finish with a jar of vaseline and a collection of pornos
I logged on in order to vent about our lack of finishing.You all have done a great job expressing my frustration. It has been a season long issue and must improve if we are going to compete for the Cup. If you put the ball on the penalty spot and took the Goal Keeper off the field,I dont think Oduro could score.I cannot believe he missed that header. What is it going to take for us to consistently finsh? And please dont anyone talk about us scoring 5 the other night.That is not the norm for our team.
Just returning from the game, I will not comment until seeing the recording of the game tomorrow, I can[t say anything right now because it was an emotional night, I can't even try to be objective. All I can say is that we left the team alone, props to our 2 supporters groups.
Odero has never finished his entire career. Just happened tonight he had/created more chances than normal so his lack of finishing showed through. The guy just freaks out when he has a real chance. Will someone just tell him to close his eyes and kick the ball as hard as he can? Ash - created some chances but failed in the final third. Ching non existant. Stuart- not his best game. Rico- All over the field. Mullan- Looked closer to the mullan we all know. Cameron- Work hard look good but he has got to get his head up when he makes his runs. Defense- Dont know how Pachuca trapped and shot without being marked on the goal. Thought considering how bad we have looked the last few months, we looked good tonight. Rarely do you have the posession that we had vs a meixcan team. Even mexican games we have got a result, we have had less possession. Just no finish. Who knows i could be full of crap because i watched i live with no replays.. Thanks CONCACAF. BTW with the horrible MLS and CONCACAF officiating this guy was solid tonight. Controlled the game without excess cards. Just hope we can make it to the next round and meet Pachuca again.
Loooong drive home tonight after that game. I had a bad feeling going into this game. I had heard Dom talk about playing 3-5-2 again like he did against Arabe Unido. Great. I don't really understand his thinking on this. Yes, the Dynamo won the midfield in the first half but at the expense of leaving our backs with no cover against dangerous attackers who are just frankly better than we are as ball players. It cost us a goal. This is the same hubris Columbus had playing their FMF opponent at home. Same result -- just the Dynamo looked a little better in the first half than did the Crew and Pachuca failed to finish their gilt edged chances in the second half. What really disappointed me was throwing in the towel in the second half. The Ashe for Barrett change was, frankly, late in coming -- but the next two changes was just quitting. (Taking off Davis and Ching, leaving Oduro out there. ) It was just giving up. Putting ERob at a strange position. Moving Geoff Cameron up to attacking Mid like that could possibly work -- he was lost up there. The team just had nothing after those changes. The changes were motivated by next Sunday -- sacrificing any hope of salvaging a point Wednesday night. For the record -- I don't mean the Dynamo players threw in the towel. I think they really wanted to win.
One of the commentators on Galavision said that if Houston Dynamo found themselves in Paris, they would not be able to score a goal in the Arc de Triomphe. I thought it was funny. Did anyone else catch that? Both teams hit the post at least once and both teams were basically off the mark the entire match.
I agree. This looked like a human being refereeing a game not some alien from freaking Mars that plays by the MIFA rules.
Now imagine if the Tuzos had even tried..... They got the Goal they needed and then sat back and absorbed the pressure. I would say with "better" finishing (but you have to have some sort of finishing for it to get "better") it may have turned out differently but it was one of those nights when "overthinking" ruined some opportunities and other than the Goalpost dinger nothing much came really close. The hustle was there until the Subs (Eddie and Cam) were made and then it seemed that the air simply went out of the team. Not over until it's over but the only thing we can control is winning at Metapan and hoping for the best out of Hidalgo.
On the subs....... 1. Ching allegedly tweaked his hamstring and that is why he came out as opposed to Oduro. He didn't want to risk Ching getting hurt. With Ching suspended Sunday, my thought was he would have played the full game if he didn't tweak his hamstring. 2. With regards to the final sub, what other sub would you have Kinnear make? Putting a defender on and moving Cameron in midfield is probably the best option there. Cruz is with the U-20's. Landin is unavailable. Thompson wasn't on the bench. Don't know that there is a better option offensively than Robinson for Davis. Davis looked like he had run out of gas a bit at that time. Plus if he pulls a defender than we are left with two at the back. So what would be the better option? 3.
Oduro, Oduro, Oduro. I shouldn't be too hard on you, you tried hard last night. It may be too cruel to state that Oduro is not and will never be a soccer player. While I realize that forwards don't grow on trees, I can't believe there isn't a better "cheap" player available somewhere. I think we need to cut our loses short and work with Abe Thompson, maybe he'll work out better. Kamara may be laughing watching the game and reading our posts (Kamara, your performance was less-than-perfect and not worth the ton of money you demanded, even though as somebody pointed out, you did score goals). I need to watch the game again, I really wasn't into the game yesterday, I missed a lot. It was a bit painful to watch. But I LOVED the ref giving cards to Pechuga for wasting time. LOVE IT!! Card to the goalkeeper Culero, yeah!!! I hope Landin produces soon. I think that Dom needs to start looking hard for speedy forwards for 2010. I continue to believe that some Central American players would be CHEAP and could do much better than Oduro. Shoot, I think that my neighbor's daughter could play better than Oduro, and she is only 9 yrs old! Kamara, don't laugh, you had issues too... *************** Robertson atmosphere? The place appeared to be dead. Or maybe I was the only one who was dead. I have to admit that I decided to drink beer, check my email, get to know the nice 5* rent-a-cops, make some phone calls, leave some voice messages, send some emails, and eat many of the delicacies sold at Robertson stadium. I almost fell asleep after the 3rd beer. I had a hard time watching the game last night. I couldn't stand it. The crowd was thin and absent (AGAIN, yeah, maybe I was on my own little drunk world and got the wrong impression). Our wonderful supporter groups seemed to cancel each other last night, even more than usual. EB, TA, the colorful drumming guys, and the midfield sections on either side attempting to organize a chant just to be canceled out by the sound of the other groups. Or maybe it was just that my mind was wandering the entire time. Negative atmosphere-comments usually piss off the supporter groups, but that's how it is. I Too bad we don't have a stadium-wide chant. Attempts to start a "Let's go Dynamo" sounded sporadic and weak, and I couldn't get myself to join any of them last night. My throat was dry and mute. People seemed sad and disappointed. Or maybe it was me.