Pablo Ruiz has been pretty pedestrian the past two games. Almost a lazy turnover there, and lazy tracking from time to time too. Sheesh, great chance there for Nashville.
I'm not pleased. Draw that feels like a loss. But, it is the nature of soccer. Games that you play well enough to win, you lose. Vice versa.
Disagree completely, Rusnak is our highest paid player, he is our captain and yet he has literally done nothing the past 2 years. The sooner we sell his sorry ass the better this club will be. Maybe under a different manager or system he will excel, but tonight showed he has zero influence on his teams approach, his teams success, and his teams future. Time to cash out.
So glad we just couldn’t make the game tonight. watched the whole thing though. Glad Freddy made 4 subs. Still don’t understand how he thinks subbing after the 80th minute is ever going to give players a chance to truly impact the game. That being said, what have Jr. and Chang done to deserve being the super subs off the bench? I started listening to the Bleeding Claret & Cobalt podcast this weekend. In the first two episodes it was mentioned multiple times how Freddy is a tactical genius. I think they might have been talking about his soccer coaching but I could be wrong. Oh well. On to Dallas.
No. Baby steps, baby steps... I have a lion one too. I thought it would be hilarious to wear it for pride week. You know, lion : pride. I figured some might find my turning their cause into a cheap pun offensive, so I left it at home.
So, I’m not a fan of Freddy’s substitution patterns generally. He is taking flack for putting in subs too late to impact the game last night. It’s a point that is made after many games tbh. However, I want to point out that his late subs did, indeed, impact the game. Prior to that move all of the momentum was with Nashville. They were repeatedly breaking down our defense after the 65th and we had trouble maintaining any possession. I had accepted that we were going to give up a goal late. After Freddy’s 3-player sub in the 80th, or so, all of Nashville’s momentum went away. Even if I cannot prove cause-and-effect, I can confidently argue an association between the two. I think the reality is that right now we don’t really have a sub who is going to come in and impact a game in the way that our fans want to see(ie, come in and score goals or otherwise light our fire) Admittedly, Brody was the exception to this POV. Last night Freddy subbed in 2 defenders who never see the pitch. After a while a fan near me remarked that they would rather Toia have stayed in given how his sub was playing. I responded that the only way these guys will get get better is to see the pitch more often. Freddy’s gamble of playing those two paid off imo. They got playing time, didn’t kill us, and helped to stem Nashville’s momentum. I would like him to do more of this. My biggest complaint was/is that he kept Ruiz in. He, more than any other player, needed to come out. I would have liked Portillo to have been given some playing time.