friday round up and a crowded top of the table

so he has done it again, mike finds himself traveling in europe while you and I are left alone, in front of our computers, dealing with a lack of updates to gosounders.com. i will do my best to keep the news a flowing, but i just don’t have the time to get the news out there as often as mike does.

but with that, let’s see what is going on….

reaction to the barcelona match…. actually, i was pretty surprised by the mainstream media, and some of the posts out there. some people think we have really fallen on hard times. now, having said that, yes, we did lose 2 games in a row to a 4-0 scoreline. but barca was a friendly, we played our second string for a half, and, um… there was one other thing……. OH YEAH, IT WAS BARCA-FRICKEN-LONA!!!!   did you not see those trophies out there on the pitch? that says “we are like really really good… ummmm kay”. come on people.

yes the SJ loss was embarrassing, and if your point is that we really need to win tomorrow b/c that loss to SJ could hurt our chance to secure one of the top two spots in the west…. well fine, i would agree with that. but to say, as i have read in many different forms that the loss to barcelona is adding to our poor form?  what did you expect? did you really think we were going to win that game? sure sure, deep down, as fans we always will think…”wouldn’t it be awesome….” and that is normal. but to analyze that performance, against the best team in the world, on a crap pitch, you just can’t do it. ok, enough of that, my point is made.

a little luck fell our way yesterday when houston continued their poor form in losing to dallas, the second worst team in our division (although they have all of a sudden found their scoring boots lately). so it is all getting a little crowded at the top. instead of there being a few teams gunning it out, well all of a sudden we have LAG only one point behind us, chivas 2 points behind but with TWO games in hand, and colorado only two points behind. however, if we win our two games in hand over houston, well we are tied on points…. so while it is nice to look at the standings and see our name in second place, well, that really doesn’t come clost to telling the story. a nice run and we are back in first, 1 or 2 losses in a row, we could drop to 4th/5th.

so we damn well not be overlooking RSL. the LAG game on the horizon stands out b/c they are so close to us, but if RSL take 3 points of us tomorrow, well all of a sudden we have given them an invitation to the playoff run. we don’t need another contender thank you very much.

so without knee jerking it too much, we really need 3 points this saturday. we probably could have settled for a draw if we had done to SJ what we should have done, but we didn’t, so we can’t. Chivas and Colorado are playing each other so i will be routing for a draw on that one, and then houston has no easy task when they host Chicago on Sunday. 

i have asked our friend Joe to maybe put together a RSL preview for us. he did such a good job on the houston one back in the day while mike was fulfilling his ambassadorship duties to the bahamas or something like that. i haven’t heard back from Joe, but i am hoping that this public pressure will get to him and get is priorities straight. guest writing for gosounders.com Vs work. easy call joe!!!!

so look for that later…. hopefully.