the honeymoon is over
well i am not going to write too much tonight b/c that wasn’t the most fun game to watch… not going to lie.
even though we lost last week, we could all get behind the fact that the ten men Sounders almost pulled it off, and they, for the most part, played better down a man then when it was equal. so it had a bit of a feel good warm fuzzy feeling even though the loss.
tonight…………. well…………. not so much.
we weren’t terrible, but i tell you what, chivas were pretty much the better team, everywhere on the pitch, for most of the game. i hate the loss, but i hand it to chivas, they deserved the win. quickly looking at some of the forums, there are some people bitching about chivas’s aggressive play. there is no doubt that they were indeed coming in hard and it was part of their strategy, however, there is hard (clean) and there is hard (dirty). i didn’t think it was dirty for the most part… and to be honest, i think we need to be a little bit tougher ourselves.
GOALS/CHANCES
we had some creative passing attempts to montero, but their defence were looking for it all game and really didn’t give him a sniff of goal. the one real chance he had was from a great pass from ljungberg but his instinctual chip of the keeper fell a few yards wide of the post.
as for their goals, well, freddie ljungberg, i love you, but you have to take most of the blame for that one. he took the ball down on his chest and tried to softly pass over to alonso, not noticing the chivas player right that who easily intercepted the ball to pass to the wing in which ultimately resulted in a riley own goal. riley will hate that result, but FL10 will know that the play started with him turning off for just a second.
the second goal was a well worked counter attack against a sounders team that was pushing and pushing to get the equalizer… you could see it coming with the number of people we were pushing forward. the game was well and truly over then.
between goals, our best chance fell to le toux who got himself in a great position to flick on a cross. their keeper was either very lucky of VERY good b/c his hand was in the perfect place to stop it. 9 out of 10 times, that would have been a goal.
TACTICS
i will never pretend to know more about soccer tactics than sigi, but, if i had him sitting right next to me right now, i would say…. what are you thinking with letoux and evans on the wing? at least one of them needs to be nyassi or zakuani. we really really need that speed to create the width that allows us to give the quick creative passing that we have shown works for us. but you take that away, well they just sit on montero and ljungberg and we pretty much get shut down. once nyassi and zakuanicame on, we have some other creative efforts, but it was too little too late. chivas was already up 1-0 and with not that much time left on the clock, they were already in extra defensive mode…. i don’t want to say sigis tactics lost this one for us… but with one or both of those guys starting, i have a feeling we would have watched quite a different game.
THE REFEREE
well to be honest, he frustrated me a little with the amount of tough tackles he was letting go, but, to be fair, he was consistent on both sides of the ball, and really that is all you can ask. at one point ljungberg was so frustrated with the ref not calling a pretty obvious foul on scott that he kicked the ball out in serious frustration. so not everyone thought the ref had a good game.
MOVING ON
so as much as the first 3 games were amazing to watch, todays game was the opposite. it is an earlier than desired “gut check” for the team. these aren’t always bad, as they can look at themselves and find out what is going on. most of us would have liked to win more games before this happened, but if we can get a few things sorted b/c of it, then that is ok with me.
the team will need to respond next saturday however. to say that it is a must win this early in the season is a little silly, but we can at least say that the team (and fans) will really need a win.
