So everyone has heard that we're the "Best team in the league when allowing the first goal." Well I looked into that tonight, with the US Open Cup game and tonight's result, KC is 4-10-2 when allowing the first goal. When scoring first, 4-0-3, undefeated... 16 of our 23 games we've allowed the first goal, almost 70%. I don't care if we're the best team in the league when a goal down, when you allow the first goal 70% of the time that's a problem.
one cross does not make up for the rest of the season where he's played very poorly, he's lost a step and would definitely not be the answer.
where are all of those beautiful through balls on the ground. Carlos used to shred defenses with them and now were doing this stupid long ball crap, what the f!
I've noticed that too. CM has great touch when he hits it on the ground, but for some reason when he gets some air under it he just has no idea where it's going at all.
Well, Superliga note...[result]he had a $1 million-dollar saving bike not too long ago[/result]...that might make up for the rest of the season if the Gals do it...
Why is it I can read your result text without highlighting? That can't be good. More BS "upgrade" issues?
Shouldn't your attacking center midfielder, you know, score every once in a while? Marinelli, for all his potential and flashes of flair, has not scored a single goal for us outside of the PK in Chicago. Sealy is healthy again, he's had plenty of time to get fit again and get his touch back, so where's the mojo he used to have? You know, we always look good on paper. But this is largely the same club which didn't make the playoffs the last two years. It is seriously time for some changes. 1st priority is a stadium, but once we get that nailed down, I hope a DP follows soon thereafter.
I agree except for the fact that our central midfielder was playing at right midfield tonight which is obviously not his forte. Instead we had Morsink taking up the central midfield role.
which is another stupid move in my opinion. Marinelli doesn't play enough defense to play on the right wing. Raybould was left on his own WAY too often against whichever one of RSL's Argentine's was on his side, because Marinelli didn't help track back.
I'm going to look at the bright side for this game. We gave RSL fans their 'game to remember.' Every franchise needs one of these and now RSL has a great one. "Dude, remember that game when Beckerman cracked a shot inside 10 seconds, then we scored off the corner at the 43 second mark. And Andy Williams 55 yard goal. That was awesome." I'm just glad we could help out a struggling franchise. Back to reality.... We're a team that missed the playoffs for two straight years. We are dangling on the precipice of missing for a third consecutive season. What has me worried most at this point is that even after this lack of success, we could be facing a situation in which we need to blow up much of the team to really improve. I liked the 'not good enough' measure Steve Davis introduced in his ESPN column about the Galaxy recently. It might be time to start looking at the KC roster through that prism. I'm not saying every fringe player is not of MLS quality, but the 'good on paper, bad on game day' label is looking to fit this team. It can't all be coaching, some of these players simply might not be as good as they are billed and/or are living off of past glory. When it comes to the expansion draft, our question might not be which 11 players to protect, but rather do we have to protect 11.
As critical as everyone is of EJ out front, how are they not as equally critical of our captain in back? Conrad has really seemed to gotten into this lackadaisical playing style and it seemed to start during his time with the nationals and their underwhelming summer. He has consistently played balls out too "cool" which have led to many turnovers in bad positions and conceded goals. Last night, on the corner, was another example of him standing flat-footed in the box watching the ball played passed him to an opponent for an easy goal. You could almost hear him thinking, "Well, I've got my guy marked I don't need to worry about that ball." I've missed a couple games in-between (mostly because the soccer the Wizards are playing is so pathetic, and it makes me think that MLS really is as far behind as the rest of the world says), but he did the same "give-up" defense on one of the goals in the last Red Bulls game, where Twellmen absolutely depantsed him with a heading pass to Angel for a goal where Conrad literally just stood and watched. He still does a lot of very good things over the course of an entire game, but as a top defender and captain, these lapses of focus have got to stop.
which goal? You have me confused with the whole Twellman and Angel thing since they play on different teams. It sounds like you're referring to the first goal of the game when we played them here, where Wolyneic out jumped Conrad for the ball and Angel totally schooled Jewsbury.
Before Andy Williams long range bomb, I thought EJ's goal would've been goal of the week. When you read Andy Williams quote, it sounds like he knew it was a weakness of Hartman.
Agreed. Sasha and Jose were overlapping all night, and DEFENSIVELY they were okay. By not having Carlos track back, Raybould looked beat and out of place all night. I don't believe that was completely his fault. Davy was most definitely missed last night...although I still don't get why we start Morsink in center instead of Harrington on the left. AND WHERE WAS JACK? I understand you've got to rest some people with a short turnaround, but damn we could've used him and Nick. Our back line was terrible. Agreed with almost all of the above comments -- Eloy looked fantastic. Three minutes into the game he'd already put more quality crosses in the box than anyone had all game long. I'm not going to be as critical of Sealy as others...he did some good things tonight, and showed some hustle. Sasha played his ass off for 90 minutes. Eddie flat out disappeared in the second half until his goal...then promptly disappeared again. He constantly took the ball out of an attacking position (with numbers, mind you) and re-set the offense. There are times for this, but he was doing it when it wasn't warranted. We've GOT to find something to light a fire.
Sorry, I was definitely all mixed up. I'm pretty sure it was Twellman who headed it across the 6 yard box. But, I'm completely off against who scored....Looking at the game log, it might have been Noonan in the 0-2 loss.
Our main issue is conceding goals. We can lament all we want about our attacking options, creativity in midfield, etc. But since we shut out RSL on July 14 we have conceded: 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 3. The two games we have won have both been 3-2 wins. Something is up on the defensive end and needs to be solved. You don't win anything conceding so many goals.
Defensively, Kerry Zavagnin was horrible last night. Absolutely the right move to take him off at half. Total defensive lapse on the corner goal in first minute. No way you let someone run so free... Second half we looked great actually. I did think that Yura needed to come on right after Eddies goal. His pace along with Eloy could have been very dangerous.
If we hadn't given up a goal in the first minute, I think it would have been a different game. It's almost like trying to back out of the driveway with the emergency brake on and then hitting the gas to go up the street-it kind of holds you back. I agree, that we need to solve this defensive problem and quick. I love the fact that we are an exciting team this year, but for heaven's sake all 11 players need to defend. I've never seen so many guys flat footed and standing around in any game this year. If we do that in HOU, we might as well look at a 10-0 loss.
I see everyone on here bashing EJ again, and I honestly thought he had a great game. His goal was awesome, and he got and held the ball well. It just seemed to me that every time he touched the ball 3 or 4 defenders were on him instantly and he couldn't do anything. Unless you consider sucking to be "not taking on 4 defenders and scoring on a semi-regular basis" then I'd say EJ was looking good. He was even getting back and helping midfield and a bit on defense - that's not great for a striker who we want to see making runs all the time but being that Arnaud wasn't there to fulfill that role it kinda makes sense that someone had to drop back a bit. The only thing I had against EJ yesterday is he wasn't making runs like we're use to. I can choose a lot of people to pick on a lot more than EJ: Sealy didn't do much for me, his usual "at the right place at the right time" routine wasn't there at all. Zavagnin looked like shit all game, very good he got taken out at half. There were several times he simply gave up the ball and Hartman had to come up with a huge save to keep the game from slipping early. I wanna say this team will do better when Garcia and Arnaud return, but I know better. It's really sad to think we are thinking the same thing: can we make the playoffs? We are still 5 points over #8 and #9 right now, both of which are having even worse seasons than us, and we are sitting here wondering whether or not BOTH of them (not just one, if just one overtook us we'd still weed into the playoffs) are going to overtake us. Sad thoughts. Is this season still salvageable? Certainly. But we'd better start cracking down soon, and by soon I mean right this very second.
KANSAS CITY HEAD COACH CURT ONALFO On starting out slow and playing well in second half: "We started very slow, didn't have a good first half. Obviously, giving up a goal in the first minute really puts you under pressure, and the 42nd minute seems to be our Achilles heel and we give up another goal. But the positive is the guys, I thought, rallied and gave a good effort in the second half. We got it to 2-1 and I felt like we had enough chances to get it to 2-2, but unfortunately a savvy play by Andy Williams put the game away." On the three new RSL Argentines - Espíndola, Mantilla and Morales: "We knew the central defender (Mantilla) was a solid player. We had watched enough of Espíndola to know that he was a good player and we didn't know (anything about) Morales. I thought they played a fairly good first half and I thought we played a really good second half." KANSAS CITY FORWARD EDDIE JOHNSON On his second half goal: "It was one of those goals that Curt Onalfo talked all year about, scoring scrappy goals if it comes from staying with the run of play and capitalizing on the defense's mistakes. It was one of those where the ball was bouncing around, I guess the ball came into Sasha (Victorine) and came off Sasha, hit one of the defenders and came to me. I knew I was in the box so I just hit it. I was hoping to catch the 'keeper off guard, and I did. I needed it." Thoughts on the game: "It was one of those games where it was tough, I knew it was going to be tough. I just challenge myself every game when it's like that, to mentally stay into it. It was one of those games where I stayed into it, I was positive. When you're working hard and you're in tune with the game for 90 minutes, sometimes the ball pops your way and you can have a chance. Sometimes that's all it takes is a half-chance as a forward, and I took it well." KANSAS CITY DEFENDER JIMMY CONRAD Thoughts on K.C.'s slow start: "We're having a real mental block when it comes to set pieces, we've been real soft. It's just punished us this year. We need to get a little more, I don't know, dastardly, I don't know what the word is. Just be harder to play against, make sure we get an arm on somebody, just make it tough like teams do against us. I think we always come here and play pretty well, but sometimes we don't have the results to go with it. Once they get the early lead, teams do what they do best, they just sit back and it's just harder to break them down. Salt Lake did a really good job of that, but it's hard to know what the game really would've been if it would've stayed 0-0." On the effects of giving up a first-minute goal: "I don't know if it's as much the defense as it is a team thing. You say a lot of stuff prior to going out, you say a lot of stuff in the team huddle, and then to give up a goal in a minute, it kind of makes all that stuff null and void. It's something that we need to address. I think this is the third game in a row that we've given up a goal with less than five minutes before halftime. It's just a concentration thing. If we want to reach the goals that we set before the season that stuff has got to stop."
True, but only b/c Eloy only gets half a game. Really, I'm a pretty optimistic guy... generally trying my hardest to see how player's actions are 'acceptable' and whatnot. For instance, I would be the one to say things like 'look at the other teams RSL has beaten - DC and Houston, at least we're in good company' and 'perhaps the guys are tired' or even 'maybe we looked forward through to Houston'. But that's all BS. I don't want to take anything away from RSL's performance. I do think they played well and could've beaten any team in the league with their performance (well, hard to say from a defensive standpoint b/c we didn't test them enough to know if they could've stood up to it or not, but you get the point - they didn't play poorly). Still, the lack of effort has even gotten to me. We were playing some beautiful soccer earlier this year. Part of the reason that we aren't anymore is due to the method of defending that teams have employed against us - but can you blame them when it seems to be so effective? It is frustrating when Eloy (and Davy when he's there) are out there running like mad after every possible ball and then send crosses to farpost and we have nobody making the run. I'm not sure how many times we could've gotten something (at least more possession) from a farpost run, and it's not like it's hard to tell that they're going to cross it from a wide position near the byline. We've just lost our drive/heart/fire/whatever you want to call it. We need to go into games respecting our opponents but knowing we can defeat them. This isn't a question of talent, in my opinion, and also not a question of coaching (while I think there are things he can do better, I think that Onalfo has shown he can be a good coach). Anyways, that's what I think... we're not out of this yet, but we better get our butts in gear if we want to stay in it.