awesomeness… the beer report
ok, i put the girls to bed and now i am ready to post the beer report. oh, and i had beers. if you didn’t know, it is seattle beer week right now, and it is the drays second anniversary. all that, and the sounders, packed out the pub with loads of people in the back parking lot. i had to try many beers, and i did. i ended with a Peche Scaldis…. and it is haunting me in a good way. i am craving another. oh.. sorry the sounders…
mmmmmmmmmmmmm beer. ok. right.
today, for me, this is a case of what have you done for me lately eh? the sky fell last week, we were last in the west, nkufo would be the hero, montero was lazy, alonso was out… it wasn’t exactly going… as the say… “good”. sometimes we are quick to get pissed off, and sometimes we are quick to praise. last week may have been a little bit of the former, and this week is surely going to be a little bit of the latter. a win covers a lot of sins… and i care very little about that at this point in time. while all the problems have not vanished, that win sure as hell feels good. and you know what? we should let it. we should enjoy it. today, we are the best team around…. and i am loving it and so should you.
- “we should bench him every time” was a text i got at the end of this match.
of course this was in reference to montero. actually, it sounds like montero wasn’t “benched” b/c of performance, but rather b/c of a stomach bug. too bad i say b/c he deserved to be benched due to performance. hopefully it still got the point… likely not, but i hope. when you put him on the pitch with only 15 minutes to run, he actually ran most of the time. be it boredom, ego, laziness whatever, montero has an issue with running for 90 minutes and maybe picking him off the bench from time to time, regardless of reason, is the way to go, especially after nkufo/kufo arrives.
- the effort was remarkable. the sounders ran their ass off. it was the effort of a team that got their asses chewed on monday morning and thank goodness. it wasn’t without flaws, to be sure, but i want to at least call this out. it obviously wasn’t all great, and we still gave the ball away too easily and far too often, especially marshall and ianni, but i don’t want to nit pick too much when i am in my happy place.
- evans…. bless him, he isn’t a striker. i have always conceded that sigi obviously knows much more than me about his players, and about the team tactics… but i have never scratched my head more than evans as a striker. i have heard from many that he is making chances and making great runs, but my brit friends have a great saying for something like that. “it means shit fuck all if he doesn’t score”. and frankly, it doesn’t look like he will come even close. oh, and pardon my frenchiness.
- zakuani is maturing… he really is. he is starting to make the right decisions and show his maturity out there. if he keeps at it, he has a bright future.
- the ref. oh lord do i not want to talk about the ref… seriously. i am in the full “do not blame the ref camp” 99 times out of 100. but there were 2 decisions that stood out as a complete “you don’t know what you’re doing”. really. he didn’t know what he was doing.
FL10 complains a lot, but he had all the right to complain that he didn’t get that free kick just north of the 18 early in the second half. the defender got no ball, all man, and was a bit from behind. if i could pause the game, make a bet. i would have dropped $1000 that it would have been a foul, and even likely a yellow. maybe ther was an angle that i didn’t see to prove me wrong, but i haven’t seen it.
but even worse than that was the body check by Hall on Zakuani (i think). it was premeditated and cynical, and there was absolutely ZERO effort to play the ball. a dead on yellow… that that would have matched his yellow from the first half. he should have been sent off, and i would have lost $10,00o on that bet. not sure what the ref saw, or if he completely didn’t see it, which would at least make sense to me, but that was baffling.
- not sure what i think of ianni playing in the midfield… he seemed to revert back to defence only, but maybe he was providing more value than i saw.
- finally, how freaking sweat was it how we killed off the game? yes, we were all nervous as all get out, but the sounders did a full professional job with killing off that game, especially the 5 added minutes of extra time. good on you boys.
- as i already noted… everything isn’t back to hunky dory yet. we obviously need to continue with the W’s, but i am also not going to take away my joy over this win. this could be that win that helps to turn our season around and kickstart the team into the type of performance that we expect from them. or maybe it won’t, but let’s just wait to see on that. for now, we are not in last place, and we can start to build on this momentum so things are good.
god i feel good right now
COME ON YOU SOUNDERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRS
