San Jose Earthquakes - Houston Dynamo FC (Saturday, 5/24) pre/in/postgame thread [R]

Very important to post this after every game no matter what happened...

 

The Quakes schedule over the next month is pretty rough and uneven. After the Houston game, 4 road games in a row like this:

LAG - on short rest (mid-week game)
St. Louis - on short rest and early game on Saturday, to make it a little worse
Portland - after 2-week break
Dallas - mid-week after 2-week break

And then LAG at home - Stanford classico on short rest

How does Bruce manage the rotations? If he plays a lot of starters tonight, does he play them again against Houston because that's a good chance to get 3 points? And then B team in LA? And then A team again in St. Louis?

Portland is an easy one - we have a 2-week break - play the starters. And then another 2-week break against Dallas, but if we play the starters in that one, we would have to play the B team against LAG in the classico, and I think we'd want to have rested starters for that one.

Here's what I'd do:

Portland tonight - mostly A team because they are rested
Houston - mostly A team again if they can handle it on 4 days rest - a good chance for 3 points
LAG away - B team - can't play A team 3 times in a week
St. Louis away - A team
Portland - A team after 2-week break
Dallas - B team (A team is rested but you want them fresh for Stanford Classico)
LAG classico - A team

Also, I like the idea of keeping the A team and the B team mostly distinct and not doing mixing and matching. They can scrimmage against each other in training, and get used to playing with each other. The mixing and matching is just too many degrees of freedom unless you have 2 set A/B mixes.

 

Are you saying you don’t like a banh mi or nice bowl of pho?

 

Sizable Vietnamese-American population in Houston, as obviously in San Jose. There was at one point a San Jose City Councilmember, Lan Diep, who grew up there.

 

Need a Czech-American theme night for the next Houston game.

 

I think this is a big game for the Quakes. A great run of form, we need to beat the Dynamo at home (a tall task with the load of games we've had) convincingly. That would set us up for a nice run up the table.

I'm beginning to believe that this team might be something special, be nice to see them them make it so.

 

The problem is that after this Houston game, we have 4 straight road games, and they are oddly spaced out. A quick turnaround to LAG midweek, then another short turnaround to St. Louis. That's 2 straight road games on short rest. Then a break before Portland and a break before Dallas, but then short turnaround to the Stanford Classico. Gonna be tough to get points from those road games. And Arango and Daniel are still out, for this one anyway. If we can beat Houston, and get 3-4 points out of the 4 road games, we won't fall too far back. And then hopefully be poised for a good 2nd half. But things will probably get a little worse before they get better.