22 April 2006

real salt lake at houston 180

I've spent the day mountain biking in Indiana's fine Brown County, as well as Indianapolis' fine 96th street trails, and followed that up with bangers and mash at Broad Ripple Brew Pub, so there's a good chance I'll fall into a coma at any second... with that...

Go Go (if you don't know Go Go by now, you're dead to me) just fumbled the ball.. no harm done. Ladies and Gentlemen, YOUR REAL SALT LAKE Cavaliers? I'm not sure.

I know Brian Ching lit it up in week one. I'm still not impressed with him and I'm hoping Eddie Pope destroys him tonight. Jeff Cunningham is starting the game off well by fouling anyone in his area. I realize he's had a rough start to the year, but I don't think this is the sort of contribution we need out of him. See that? I used the word "we".

This is my first experience with RSL's white jerseys. They're pretty white. Eddie Robinson just showed Jeff Cunningham a does of real ultimate power. Have I mentioned the TV sponsorship on Houston's broadcast? They've running an add for a safety gate company. FabEnCo. Look it up. Your primary TV sponsor is a safety gate company? Maybe the league isn't doing as well as I had previously thought.

RSL's forwards are practicing a new type of offensive pressure; it's called "Don't". I know it's normal to just walk when the ball is on the other end of the field. I don't recall seeing someone walk when the ball was ten yards from them.

It's more longball crap this week. 18 minutes in and the offensive plan seems to be "throw it up there and hope we signed Thierry Henry when no one was paying attention." In case you haven't seen Theirry Henry lately, the guy is just a monster. . I expect better things from France this World Cup. And that's my "I watch alot of Arsenal games" aside for this RSL match report.

If your offensive is as loaded with "stars" as RSL's, and you still can't seem to string together two passes on the offensive end, who do you blame? It's not like they don't have anyone who knows how to score. But they can't seem to build anything. Everything seems like a desperate plea for a forced own-goal. They're certainly not interested building an attack themselves.

Ok. I'm done writing this. I'm just going to watch in hope that my luck changes.

* * * * *

Revisited: RSL ended up losing 2-1 after taking a 1-0 lead on a very pretty Jeff Cunningham goal. Three minutes later, Houston countered thanks to a bit of bad man marking on a corner kick. Houston scored again in around the 85th minute, and RSL had once again secured the road loss.

It appeared that RSL played the entire game trying not to lose. Even Cunningham's goal wasn't anything that was really a sustained build up on the offensive end, it was just a quick strike (and probably a bit of luck). With the amount of talent RSL has up top (Cunningham and Kreis), they really shouldn't be suffering from a lack of goals.

They seem to insist on getting Andy Williams playing time up top, but his career numbers don't really show that he deserves it. This moves Kreis back to attacking midfield, which he's probably capable of playing, but it's not where he's best suited.

Defensively they've gotten much better since the first game, and considering the lack of offense I think they do quite well. It's very difficult to spend an entire game defening.

Perhaps the thing that stuck out most was that once RSL were tied and halftime rolled around, they started to string things together on the offensive end and pressure Houston's defense. This lead to defensive mistakes and offensive opportunities. Prior to the tying goal the offensive pressure had been horrible, but I'm not sure the players can be put at fault. It seemed pretty obvious that forcing defensive mistakes wasn't a primary goal of the game plan.

All in all it was a pretty lackluster effort, despite the short window where a road victory seemed entirely possible. I think the blame lies more in the gameplanning than in the players on the field. A consistant effort to force errors could have lead to a different result.

Maybe next week.

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