Agreed. These guys would also have to take a pay cut next year if they want to remain with the team as all 3 make big contracts by MLS standards.Originally Posted by v00d00daddy
I would love to see those guys as subs but I fear that I wouldn't be able to see the play during the next home game due to all the banners and "two sticks" in protest.
Once Cronin comes back I think Robbo should sit for a game.....or 10. Then we'll see if we really need him that much.
With the restriction to roster size, MLS teams will struggle on short weeks.
And with Mo tinkering with the roster, we only have 21 players on our list;
and one isn't age eligible to play until Aug 1! White is recovering from
major knee surgery. And Cronin is away on National team duty.
That said, the RP game hurt TFC tonight.
Yes, Nana could have easily been hurt during training, but he wasn't.
Our squad played very tired tonight.
Mo's contribution isn't contributing to a constructive run to the playoffs!
It's becoming apparent to me that TFC doesn't know how to defend a lead
or protect a result. You play to the strength of your roster, which tonight
was attack and pressure, not retreat and surrender 2/3s of the field. You
also need to be inside and goalside when marking man-to-man.
However, Cummins decides that Wynne & Velez are fine at the back.
Neither won a ball in the air all match, and both got torched and turned
1v1 more times than I care to review. Robo plays short negative hospital
balls through the middle third all night; puts too many teammates
under pressure, and possession is lost. Unnecessarily!
When Robo and Brennan go forward, long, possession is lost; given
(kicked) away (exception once for Brennan in 2nd half). Our first touch is
atrocious, especially for a team that supposedly trains everyday -
exception is Vitti. Possession dictates the flow of play!
Cummins instructions are either inappropriate, not clear or are not being followed!
Guevara should have been replaced by Gala, not Velez; Wynn moves up wide, Gala goes outside back.
Gerba should have been subbed earlier, by Dicio.
White isn't anywhere near being 100%, why was he even considered. Velez could have been given a run
either up front or at the back; and if the plan was sit back, Gomez could have been brought in.
Poor substitutions hurt the cause tonight.
Overall, many players had poor efforts tonight.
ProZone summaries will not be kind to many of the starting XI.
Failed short passess; failed medium passess; failed long passess; challenges lost; passess intercepted;
failed corner kicks; turnovers on throw ins; ....
Wynne pretty much confirms his inability to read and respond on the fly.
Velez under pressure is a HUGE liability.
Lack of dominance in the air in the defending third.
The number of times in which players left their feet and missed the ball, the tackle, the man.... is very disturbing.
Seems we've got some players intent on playing their way off the roster, and it's only July!
Finally, our 1st touch was often our last touch; exception Vitti!!!
This loss sucked, but I think it's foolish to hit the panic button. We were unlucky to lose against a very good team that never loses at home. We got tired in the last fifteen minutes due to a stupid friendly and had some defensive screwups involving a fourth choice center back. This team is a marginal playoff team, and it will depend on getting some bounces to get into the postseason, but I thought it was a decent performance tonight, despite the loss.
Didn't TFC get rid of Sutton? Although he was not a fan favourite per say, I think that when the time comes those three will be gone, perhaps in the off season.
thank goodness someone is optimistic, because I sure ain't
if Crew fielded all of their first team tonight, we would have lost 6-2 or something. understand that Iro, Brunner, Oughton, Lenhart, Garey are NOT first team players for Columbus
it was a pathetic game, except for few isolate patches.
did anyone else notice that TFC only fielded 6 subs for the game?
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
Agreed.
I think Vitti playing behind Ali G would work well. Dero, Guevara, Cronin are locks in the mid, Robbo needs to sit because he is scared if the ball....sometimes i think he should be playing central defense instead and have someone else take his place.
Our back four are shyte, simple. Caught out of position so many times, careless balls forward, poor marking, SLOW.
Our mids and strikers gave us the opportunity to win, scoring twice away at columbus is no easy feat, and Frei was decent in goal once again. BUT OUR GODDAM BACK LINE IS A JOKE!
Velez did not cot us 3 points, Brennan and Cummins did
Dare I say it but look a the replay of the last goal.....Velez was not the problem, our Captain was!
Brennan had a chance to stick in and prevent that open cross going in, and he did what he did all fucking night long which was not get his nose in and close down opponents when he had the chance to. He laid off the Crew player and he got a good cross in that would have been hard for any MLS defender to have dealt with.
I lay this loss squarely at the feet of our captain.
Tonight at The Duke I wore a TFC t-shirt with Brennan's name and number on the back. I think it is going to be a good while before I wear it again.
And to Chris Cummins, I would love to hear how he thought bringing in White when he did rather than Dichio was the right move, and for that matter when he did bring Danny on why he thought taking off Gerba was the smart play.
Cummins and Brennan cost us three points tonight lads. Just great with arguably the largest game in club history coming up in four days.
As we say in Newfoundland..." I AM FUCKING ROTTED"
This is the best post...pretty much sums it all up.
Now that you mention it, i definately noticed we were gassed after about 65 minutes or so. Winsper could be one factor but the others i'd consider would be:Good thing you bring this up. I always laugh at all people who praise Winsper. He is overrated! Crew looked more energized than TFC who supposedly have one of the greatest fitness instructor.
1) Did bunkering kill our energy? (takes more energy to defend than attack) In this case i honestly thought we attacked all out until we became too tired to do anything but defend, which brings me to the next point ....
2) Did our subs do absolutely nothing and just compound the problem? I'd have to answer yes. Although there really isn't much meat on the bench. The main problem was our mid had run all game and lost it's shape. Subbing barrett was fine (as we were playing 4-5-1) but OBW didn't have much impact imo. Dichio also didn't accomplish much. What we needed was guys to suck up space to defend and counter quickly when we had the ball. IMO none of the second half subs accomplished that.
Edit: Sullivan you must have read my mind because that's everything i thought about this game.
Last edited by ag futbol; 07-25-2009 at 10:59 PM.
WTF - Adding insult to injury, but is TFC travelling by bus?
edit = DCU & SanJose 2-2 final.
edit #2 = email sent to a TFC player, reply rec'd - they are busing home from Columbus and ProZone summary very ugly!
Last edited by Sullivan; 07-25-2009 at 11:38 PM.
one more thought
Serioux. Not a LB.
He does an adequate job as LB, but adequate is ok when the other 3 defenders are good, and can cover for your mistakes when you do occassionally screw up.
Not in TFC's case.
Serioux's biggest attributes, strength, positioning and guts was primarily negated on LB while it could have more useful on CB with Garey and Lenhart who are target striker types and not mobile need to battle it out with strong defenders.
Instead, Serioux got torched on LB for first goal, and Ekpo and his pace on 2nd half.
Maybe Cummins learned his lesson that Velez is a defensive liability. I don't think he cost the game under Cummins management yet
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
He was making it up to the Crew fans for having to reside in Columbus.
TFC just played the two top teams in terms of points in the league. It was always going to be tough to get a lot of points from these games. Too many people on this board just seem to consider TFC in isolation. It's like TFC is a teenage girl sometimes, in reality the whole world does not revolve around this club and its ups and downs.
This was a tough loss, no doubt, but they played the best home team in the league tough and were winning with twenty minutes left. It will be the club's detriment if every loss is an apocalypse, this is the attitude that ruined clubs like Newcastle because it leads to endless short-term reactionary thinking.
It was a heart breaker but this nowhere close to apocalypse.
Ya I'd heard about that. I believe it was some sort of bonding exercise although I would imagine that getting a late commercial flight out of Columbus to Toronto without going through another US city can't exactly be an easy thing to do.
with due respect, as someone who has studied this league a little, if anything MLS parity means that a team can beat any other team on a game day
however, circumstances do tilt the chances of a team winning.
so points... they are relevant, but not to the fact that we can separate who is the best team in the league. especially this season considering how many teams are so tight for the playoffs spot (and TFC was only a point behind Columbus)
the circumstances were perfect for a TFC win. 5 of Columbus's starters were out, including Shitlicker who has about a 1/3 of Columbus's goals so far this season. their key CB Chad Marshall was out, and Andy Iro and Brunner aren't exactly the most talented CBs in the world. ok, but nothing that TFC attack shouldn't be too worried about (and the attacking game was good!)
TFC defence made Garey and Big Bird look like good MLS strikers. they aren't. they work hard, and they have their upsides, but before this game, they hardly contributed to Columbus's offence. they were key to Columbus's victory against RSL last week, but coming into this game, Garey had 3 goals, and Lenhart had 1. basically a makeshift offence for the Crew, and TFC just pretty much drank stupid juice on defence
it was a game that we should have won, regardless of whether we were playing away. it was a test of character game, because it's a rivalry game, and the lads FAILED, esp to give up the winning goal in injury time.
given that we still have to play most of our games on the road, and the schedule doesn't exactly get any easier with 3 more key games coming up, if the lads can't hold on to get something out of a game that we really need to start picking up points on, how can we expect the lads to step up when the shit really hits the fan?
i can take a loss, if it's a hard fought loss, or something happened outside of player control (ie ref fuck ups). but this game, the defence esp gave up and did not put 100% effort.
this I cannot condone
mentally, this team is not 100% in the game all the time. I'd be happy if this team barely makes the playoffs now
unless something really changes in the team atmosphere, TFC will keep dropping easy points
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
it would be an interesting bonding exercise
if I was Velez, I'd stay the hell away from DeRo. probably lock himself in the shitter the entire ride
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
I immediately shut down the stream in a furious rage when they scored and just came back now to see the fallout. Urge to kill fading...RISING...fading..fading...gone.
Just got home (to Windsor) from the match. Absolutely shattered. Cracking game of football, but what a terrible, crushing defeat. I'll have some thoughts later. There were probably about a hundred of us in the stadium. I hope we came across relatively well, all things considered, on TV. We tried our best.
Sadly, I could see our loss tonight coming a mile away. We didn't play very well in the second half and it was only a matter of time before our lead was erased. I wasn't surprised at all.
Last edited by Hooligan69; 07-26-2009 at 02:36 AM.
thought i was alone in thinking that.
Gerba was gassed and it was showing. He's played a lot of games recently after being off for awhile and Cummings was also probably thinking ahead to a big game - the biggest game in our history - on Wednesday night. So, I understand that move.
When we sit back and defend, we lose. With that in mind I wasn't against bringing on a striker when Columbus were starting to pour it on. Rather than try to kill the game off, I thought bringing on a striker was a good move. What I can't understand is why White and not Dichio. The only reasons that I can think of are that maybe he thought White was something new and unfamiliar for the Columbus D to have to think about, or maybe he just thought that White was hungry and eager to prove himself and played a hunch. In an important game, I'd rather see Dichio come in - experience is worth more than eagerness when the pressure is on.
^ agreed.
Unfortunately, the only assured thing we can take from last night's game is that we will forever be featured in any "Top 10 Comebacks in Columbus Crew History".... so yeah... that's nice.
On the plus side though, it looks as though the Nordecke got a copy of the RPB Songs and Chants CD. When they were down 2-1, I was fully expecting them to start chanting "C..R..E..............W...."
LMAO!
My cousin who is only a casual fan, but who has been to 5 or 6 games with me came over to watch the game at my house last night. While watching the game and hearing the Crew fans she must have said "Oh, they do that song to?" 3 or 4 times.
you guys talk always about the defence, but how come there is always somuch pressure on the defence, because we dont have a midfield.
Look the fucking robinson wat can you do with that guy, what can you do with Barrett and the man who allone talk and never is concentrait on the game because he talk tomuch Guevara no this is not a mls team.
First of al the manager have to go out and build a team a team that fit in the mls
"The squad is good enough." - Mo Johnston
one thing.....can we keep Serioux at CB, the past few bad performances have been when he has played LB.
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