I hope both coaches give the referee, Michael Kennedy, a failing evaluation and that the league suspends him from reffing the rest of the season. That was an exceptionally poorly reffed game. Calls were totally inconsistent. 1. Leitch, to stop the start of a counter, grabs Dema's shoulder, spinning him around. All we get is a restart. Less than one min later, Petke grabs jersey in midfield to stop a Metroscum counter and out pops the yellow card. 2. Leitch plows into Prideaux within the next ten min, no card and Brandon comes up limping. 3. I think it was Leitch who took Bobby down from behind that led to the PK. A definite PK, it was also a definite RED CARD. No card was issued. 4. Another persistent infringer who had at least 3 bookable tackles was Bartholomew. His wipe-out of Quintinilla could even have been a red card. 5. Mathis's 2nd booking, a yellow, was for an elbow to the back of Bobby's head. It was a clear, direct RED CARD offense for violent conduct. 6. To be fair, Eliseo should also have gotten at least two yellows. 7. When are the refs going to penalize a team, both us and them, for delaying the game on rekicks with all the time wasting to get the ten yards established???? I could go on and on, but let's stop at this point. FIRE Michael Kennedy. While we're at it, fire his whole crew. The Senior Assistant made several bad calls, and not just when out of position. Now, for player evaluations. Hard to evaluate them because the ref made this game all about him. Nonetheless: 1. Bobby had a very poor day. 4-5 times he tried to dribble around someone and was stripped of the ball every time. Most of those times he had a good passing option, one even with Earnie making a diagonal run in the box to the near post when Bobby cut in from the right side and got dispossessed again. 2. Their Eddie Gaven has some serious skills and pace. He caused us problems all over the field. 3. I'd like an eyewitness account of the Jolley/Nelson jockeying in the box on a free kick that earned them both a yellow card. 4. There were two main differences between our performance today and the one last Wednesday. First, Bennie's early injury hurt us. Second, Marco slows down our attack too much. Sure he buried the PK, but I bet Earnie would have buried it too, or Q2, or whoever. 5. Martins is a load to handle, he should start. 6. For a defensive back line all getting cards, 3 of them early in the game, kudos to them for shutting down the Metros without getting tossed. 7. Just before Ivanov's foul, a Metro fouled a DC player during the dispossession and we got no call. Ivanov might even have been motivate for a little retaliation. His tackle, right in front of both benches probably warranted a foul, but the yellow was harsh compared to the other no calls made by Kennedy. 8. I felt it was a mistake to waste a couple of late corners by trying to take them short and waste time in the corner. Earnie, however, was slammed into from behind and physically knocked 6 feet on one, no call, and NY went upfield. My line-up for the next game: Warren Ivanov, Nelson, Stokes, Prideaux Q2, Namoff, Convey, Stewart (as the AM) Martins and Cerritos up top. Subs; Chino for Convey early if Bobby plays as poorly as he did tonight. Stoitchkov as a sub late if we need a goal. Carroll for Ivanov when switching to a 3-5-2 with the Brian's as the twin d-mids with one joining the attack and the other covering.
well im just as dissapointed wit the tie as everyone else but... i was just at the mls site and realized that we could pretty much seal a play-off spot wit a win in columbus next week despite this result. we can't mathematically seal one, but we can almost be guarnateed one. columbus lost 2 ne and have 31 pts so if they loose to us next week the most they can have for the season is 40. if we win we have 40. we wouldn't win the tie-breaker yet wit a win and so we wouln't seal a spot but it would be pretty much guaranteed since our only other game wit them would be at home.
The thing about Metro is that they make up in work and hustle for their obvious lack of talent. They're an awful team, and play ugly soccer. There's not one guy on the Scum that I would trade for his D.C. United counterpart. Saying that, they are always working. They are gritty. They play a physical game, constantly beating down on you. That was the case in the home match in July, and that was the case today. Contrast that with United -- how many times have we seen them hanging on for dear life at the end? We need to be more aggressive later in the game, and stop the bunker mentality. We're going to have to get it in our heads that one goal isn't enough. We're not that good a defensive/possession side that we are going to get away with scoring one goal that much. I've also always been concerned about our conditioning. At the end of matches, most teams are running all over us. Apart from feeling violated by this loss, the worst thing is that it could have robbed us of home-field advantage during the playoffs if United and the Scum finish in the same position as they are today. The way we play, we really would benefit from the home field.
Watching His Watch I don't know if the league will have the ability to review this, but I was watching the referee for about 2 minutes before the metros scored. He did NOT look at his watch once. I mentioned it to my gf before the penalty and she watched with me. Even during the kick he didnt look. Once they scored the goal, I looked to my gf and said watch, he will blow the whistle immediately, and he did. I cannot believe that this happened, but did anyone else notice? How can he be so blantant in favoring the trailing team?
they tried to pick a fight with us too. we would have won. me and josh woulda taken all 30 of em. mother *#*#*#*#ers.
I couldn't tell who lost Magee on the goal, but if it was Ivanov it wouldn't surprise me. That would be at least the third or fourth time a goal has been scored on a set piece because Ivanov left his mark. There have been numerous other times Ivanov's mark has received the ball and failed to score. I agree that if the play that dispossessed DC of the ball was not a foul then Ivanov going after a 50/50 ball was not a foul. I didn't see much evidence of poor or superior coaching on either side of the ball. It was a brawl and the Metros were just a little more motivated after their crap performance on Thursday. Bradley started Addo again after his atrocious game on Thursday!! You can blame Ray for starting Marco after Earnie's superlative performance, but with three games in a week and with Guevara out it was a risk that most on these boards would have taken. And Marco didn't play poorly. My only problem is that if you start Marco you should also start Martins who can not only hold the ball but seems like he might be our fastest forward as well. Martins can then either hold the ball and wait for Marco to jog upfield into a dangerous position or he can try to create a goal himself (which neither Cerritos nor Stewart can do) or he can play vertical and connect on an Etch long ball. If Olsen hadn't been injured I'd say we're in fine position. If we had won today against the run of play I think we would have come out overly satisfied on Wed. This way I believe we will attack on Wednesday and end up taking 2 1/2 out of three.
Injury time lasted between 5:30 and 6 minutes. I remember thinking after it crossed the indicated 5 minute mark that there should only be one more play. Unfortunately, it was a goal. There was a lot DC should've done today to get a 2nd goal and not have to worry about crap like that at the end. Nonetheless, I think most of us would've been happy if before these 2 games we had known we'd end up getting 4 points.
I just saw the replay of the foul on Convey that lead to the PK. That was a bad foul from behind. The Metros player cleated Convey's calf. That should have been a card, at least a yellow, and it could have been red. The ref was gutless about that.
We played stupid football in the last 10 minutes of that game and it killed us. We had zero posession, anytime we did win the ball instead of playing it wide and deep into the other teams corner we tried a fancy or useless pass which was quickly stolen and driven back down our throats. Also givign up 4 free kicks in a 5 minute span from the top of the box area near the end of the game is not smart soccer. We did this in the game against LA and it cost us, and here we did it again. Olsen's injury was crucial, it allowed the metros to control the flanks and that hurt us all game long.
Referee this Referee that Lose your man on a free kick that is the last play of the game as it looks like your team is going to steal three points it really didn't earn Makes me eat my hat
The strangest thing I saw during the game was that Richie Williams headed balls in the midfield at least three times. Long balls booted up field and Richie gets his head to them. That was bizarro world.
Here is the ugly truth !! At the begining of the season I was yelling from the top of my lungs : we need strikers because the ones we have are crap !! Sure enough, after long and painfull delays, after the " Convey's saga " we got Cerritos and Martis. A lot of people put their faith in the Cerritos/ Stewart tandem. Unfortunatelly, we got the short straw !! What kind of crap strikers are those who cannot score at home in front of their own supporters !! I have said it before, we as DCU fans have to live with our coaches' choices !! I hope you guys will remember that at the end of the season and ask our "dear" coaches what the f... was the "strikers business all about" !! I think, we deserve an answer from them !!! Hopefully, next year they will understand that without talented strikers there is no soccer show worthy for our money no matter how good the defense !!
While I do agree that we are still in need of a pure, outright goalscorer, I think you're overreacting to an admitably poor but not horrible performance from our strikers. Earnie was played out of position. You saw what happened Thursday when he occupied Marco's spot. Should we have scored more than one goal today? Yeah. But it doesn't mean that the Ronald-Earnie combo is a total failure. We DID get a point.
The hell?! I just read that Eddie Gaven was the MOTM, according to MLSnet.com. Did I miss something here? Did he do anything even remotely important that would lead one to label him MOTM? They might as well have said Mike Magee or Marco Etcheverry for scoring goals.
HAHAHAH i was actually htinking they shoudl do that . . . I just wanted to read what Bob Bradley would have to day about it.
Well, there's no need to watch the second half on Tivo now, you frikkin' inconsiderate dolt! Really Chris, for all the smack you talk on this board to screw up like this is, well, really maddening.
(dwelling on the positive... ) Hey those "Insecurity" Barra shirts sure were funny!! Right?! Note to team: --PLEASE DC KILL THOSE MOTHERF$$$$$$ THIS WEEK AT RUTGERS. thanks
Anyone know why the Scum weren't presented with the Atlantic Cup after the match? oh and about the 5+ minutes - anyone else feel that the one minute of stoppage for the first half was way too little - especially given Ben's injury? The amount of time didn't upset me. And I agree, when you're up a man we shouldn't complain.
A trend I've noticed in MLS this year is that it's almost always one minute of stoppage at the end of the first half and then whatever should have actually been added gets tacked on in the second. There may be some sort of thing around the league where they like certain events (halftime, start of the second half, etc.) to go off as predictable times, so around the league they've told the refs to simply tack the extra time onto the second half. While the 5 minutes in the second half was excessive, 6 minutes for the whole match wasn't. But yeah, if you were some sort of nutcase, I bet if you went through MLS boxscores this year, you'd find that second half stoppage was at least twice as much as first half stoppage and possibly more.
Why Did Ray Leave For The PK? Did anyone notice that Ray left the field while Marco was setting up for the PK and didn't come back until after the PK was done? Why?