Dwayne De Rosario, quality from the opening whistle.
I don’t know what it is with me and Sundays lately, but I’m late again, so please do accept my apologies.
United and Liverpool are doing battle right now so I won’t bother you with any sort of commentary on it, I’m sure if you’re watching it you’re seeing the same things I am.
It’s drawing nearer and nearer towards the end of the regular season in MLS and there were some interesting results in the league last night.
Columbus Crew laid a complete egg in front of their home fans last night, losing to Seattle Sounders 4-0. The Sounders are still chasing a playoff birth in the highly competitive Western Conference, and they still stand sixth in the standings there on 36 points. The Crew still lead the Eastern Conference on 44 points, three points better than their closest pursuers, New York Red Bulls.
Complicating things for the Sounders were the Colorado Rapids, who thoroughly thrashed the relatively hapless New England Revolution 3-0. The Rapids stayed a point ahead of both the Sounders and the San Jose Earthquakes, who earlier in the week defeated the Philadelphia Union at Buck Shaw Stadium. It’s going to be a real dogfight down the stretch for these teams to see who claims playoff spots and who doesn’t.
The top two teams in the Western Conference were both victorious, as Los Angeles defeated DC United 2-1 on two late Landon Donovan goals, and defending champion Real Salt Lake dispatched the Chicago Fire 1-0 on a penalty in stoppage time at the end of the first half. The West has been vastly superior to the East this season and last night certainly continued that trend.
The only Eastern Conference club to buck the trend were Toronto FC, who behind two goals from Dwayne De Rosario managed to hold off the lowly Houston Dynamo (and yeah, it felt weird to write THAT sentence). De Rosario probably very much enjoyed scoring those two against his old club, and it was a needed victory as it put the Reds firmly into third place in the East on 31 points. I was impressed with Toronto’s physicality when they came to PPL awhile back and you can certainly see them being a team that no one will want to see once the playoffs roll around. Today, Chivas USA plays host to the Kansas City Wizards in what is a highly important match for the Wizards if they are to stay within sight of the playoff chase. Chivas is sadly buried under the avalanche of good sides in the West and they are mostly playing out the string at this point.
Let’s see what’s on the docket for today’s viewing, with all times Eastern as usual.
8:30 am – Fox Soccer Plus – Manchester United vs. Liverpool
9:00 am – ESPN3.com – Chievo Verona vs. Brescia
9:00 am – ESPN3.com – AS Roma vs. Bologna
9:00 am – ESPN3.com – Udinese vs. Juventus
9:00 am – Fox Soccer Channel – Palermo vs. Inter Milan
10:30 am – GolTV – St. Pauli vs. Hamburg
11:00 am – Fox Soccer Channel – Chelsea vs. Blackpool
11:00 am – ESPN Deportes/ESPN3.com – Hercules vs. Valencia
11:30 am – ESPN3.com – Schalke 04 vs. Borussia Dortmund
12:30 pm – Fox Soccer Plus – West Brom vs. Birmingham
1:00 pm – Telemundo – Toluca vs. America
1:00 pm – ESPN2 – Atletico Madrid vs. Barcelona
2:45 pm – Fox Soccer Channel – Sampdoria vs. Napoli
3:00 pm – GolTV – Malaga vs. Sevilla
3:00 pm – Fox Soccer Plus – Bordeaux vs. Lyon
5:30 pm – GolTV – Flamengo vs. Fluminense
8:00 pm – Direct Kick – Chivas USA vs. Kansas City Wizards
Enjoy the matches today, and as usual, thanks so much for your clicks and comments. Find us in comments and on twitter as usual, and have a great Sunday.
Liverpool supporters I await your justifications, rationalizations, moralizing, finger-pointing, plain old excuses, and explications of how everything is JUST FINE with your team.
I don’t think anyone’s saying things are just fine; they haven’t been that way for at least two seasons. I do think, though, that today’s loss – and the associated lackluster performance that goes along with it – is not the make-or-break moment for the season. We’re five games in and have played probably the most difficult opening five fixtures that any non-promoted team has. Of course, we performed pretty poorly in those games, which sucks. But we’re really not shooting for the title this season, and I think everyone knew that from the get-go.
We ARE shooting for the top four, though. You can try to dissect the problems from last year (which, really, have just carried over into this year) in two ways:
1) Liverpool failed to beat the teams around them on the table.
2) Liverpool failed to put away teams that, objectively speaking, they had the skill to beat.
I want both categories fixed, but fixing just that second category would’ve put us in the CL last year; losing to Sunderland, Portsmouth, and Wigan, plus drawing with Stoke, Wolves, and Hull cost 15 points, and if we had all fifteen of those points, we’d be in third. If we get just half, and round it down, it’d put us in fourth (barely, assuming we’d win the goal differential tiebreaker over Spurs).
We’re looking at the table right now and seeing five points from five games, and yeah, that sucks. But we haven’t really had a chance to address the inability to put away games against the bottom of the table yet, because we haven’t played any of those teams.
So, while I’m definitely not thrilled with the performance thus far, I’m willing to accept these losses if it means that over our next five games we can figure ourselves out. Our next five games are Sunderland (H), Blackpool (H), Everton (A), Blackburn (H), and Bolton (A). All of those games are winnable (not “easy”, but winnable); the true test of whether this club has improved enough to get back into the Champions League is going to be how they perform there, not against how they perform against teams that, admittedly, are better than they are (Arsenal, Man City, and Manchester United all have resources and talent that Liverpool simply don’t have at the moment, and while a win or even draw today would be nice I wasn’t expecting it).
Now, if we’re only sitting at twelve points or so at Halloween, we’re unbelievably fucked. And, honestly, that’s certainly a possibility, given the way things have been going lately. But if we’ve learned at least how to win ugly against the West Broms and Blackpools (which our performances in the Europa League suggest we might have done), than I’ll take wins there and losses to Manchester United while we’re sorting ourselves out.
(That’s a really long way to say that, under the circumstances, I’m not chalking up the season after only five games.)
Your response surpassed even my highest expectations!
The thing with Liverpool is they look shaky. Even when they have a lead, they never look like they’ll keep it. They look like a shy child who does something great, but can’t enjoy it because they know their clumsiness will lead to a huge cock-up afterwards.
On the field, the defence is the issue. They can score, but they get ripped open by other teams. Sadly, I don’t see a change in this anytime soon. A CL place? No. An EL place, maybe. I don’t think they’ll be like West Ham and fighting relegation. Mid-table medicority might be where they land this year though.
Off the field, that is where the greater problem lay. If this ownership situation does not get fixed, it will unsettle on the field and next summer will be an exodus of disgruntlement or an exodus to settle the books. Hodgson is a great man in a storm, but this will test even him I think. The board know what’s at stake here and I think a long protracted fight against the Yank ownership is forthcoming, unless common sense prevails.
I think the defense is symptomatic of larger issues, though; part of the problem is that teams are (rightly) no longer really scared of playing Liverpool, which leads to more teams actually trying to get results. There’s an intimidation factor that goes into game prep; you don’t want to be the team that decided to try and “play football” against Chelsea only to have them tear you apart with a 6-0 thrashing, so you set up a bit more defensively.
Chelsea’s used to playing stacked defenses because they actually punish teams that try for a result. Liverpool was playing stacked defenses (which, often, means there are more defensive mindsets throughout the team; less wing play, maybe, or less concentration on through balls in an effort to secure a scoreless draw), but slowly teams have realized that there really isn’t anything to be scared of. If last season taught us anything it’s that that’s the exact WRONG way to play Liverpool. The best thing to do is to run right at them and make them cope, and it’s turning out they can’t. Two years ago, it was a different story, but since teams started to actually their defense has been suspect; it’s like it aged five years overnight.
In reality, our fullbacks are poor; I’ve had runs at Glen Johnson before, and Konchesky (who’s new to the team) had a pretty bad game today. There’s also NO depth at all, so there’s no chance to rest someone, meaning everyone gets tired. Plus, Carragher’s too old.
That said, though, we’ve kept two clean sheets (and the goal against Arsenal is hardly indicative of a defensive struggle); it’s the lack of goal scoring that’s really the problem, and is far more worrying to me. There seems to be a complete inability to do anything in the final third; if it was just against Manchester today, I’d write it off as that, but it’s not. We’ve seen signs of this problem in EVERY game this season; Man City, West Brom, and Birmingham all showed an offense that’s just not quite sure what to do. A tired defense supporting a confused midfield with no link-up to their striker(s) is a recipe for disaster. I think that, if the goals come, the defense will be back to themselves a bit.
The first half today was pretty much one-way traffic: Manchester attacking, with stints of Liverpool passing the ball to Reina (who’d boot it long to an offense that would almost immediately turn it over; rinse/lather/repeat). No defense does well when it’s under constant pressure; half of this team isn’t putting in the shift that’s needed, and the other half (simply by virtue of being the final link that breaks down) is constantly in the spotlight. That’s not to say that there aren’t problems there, but more that we have this other, bigger problem that we need to address just as much, if not more, than that first one.
All very valid points.
Here’s a question for you: Hodgson went on record and said the squad is too big, recently, and needs to be thinned. Do you think the issue is there’s a lack of depth or a lack of *good* depth…or possibly both?
Geographically speaking, I’m blaming the Toffees’ poor performance on pure dread of the Barbie pink kit. Well, that and lack of defence.
Given it’s the same cast as last year, I don’t get why they’ve been so poor this year. The goals aren’t coming, the defence is leaky, and Tim Howard looks mortal. I hope they’re not in the relegation fight, as I really hoped they’d be pushing the top end of the table.
You know how some kits, when seen out of context, actually aren’t as bad as they seem? The Everton kit actually gets worse when you see someone wearing it. It’s far and away one of the worst kits I’ve ever seen a major team wear.
That said, your home one is sweet, and the pink striped one from last year was as well. They should’ve just left the away kit alone.