Texas, Messed With

All season, many United fans have extolled the virtues of surprising rookies.  But little attention has been given to two of the older players, Jamie Moreno, and Christian Gomez.  And with good reason, both players have been off to slow starts due to injuries and suspensions.  But that’s OK.  Nobody wins the MLS Cup in April, or May.  In recent years, the team has ridden Moreno into the ground as they depended on him to provide, well, just about everything througout the whole season, including the awful heat of July and August.  Leaving only the shell of a worn out player in September and October.

With the team’s newfound depth, Soehn has the opportunity to not completely rely on these two players regaining form in order to get results.  But Saturday’s game reminded some of us of Jamie from year’s gone by (without the blond hair).  Simply put, Jamie put in a complete performance calmly putting in two goals on situations where teammates in recent weeks have pushed the ball too far over or around the goal.  Jamie just put the ball into opposite corners of the net.  And proved to be the one thing hotter than the SE "We Mess With Texas" T-shirts.

Though all wasn’t perfect, once again United had to rally from one goal down to pull out the win.  Fortunately, they didn’t wait unti stoppage time to start their comeback.  In fact United was down a goal despite the run of play, when Dallas put home their one good opportunity on a corner kick.  United just missed the goal a couple of times in the first half and Moreno struck the woodwork (even though the goal is made out of aluminum, but aluminumwork doesn’t have the same literary weight as woodwork).

United’s comeback started from the unleashed Namoff.  Some are surprised by his assist total this season, three.  But he brought in 14 career assists into this season, most of those from his rookie season when he played central midfield.  Bryan has vision when it comes to passing, as most of those were through balls.  The key in 2009 is Bryan’s confidence (and coaches’ encouragement) to play the long ball out of the back.  The worst case scenario from this attack is that the opposition must respect the ability, thus creating more room for the midfield to operate.

And space really is a key for United.  The rookie midfielders have done an excellent job of not getting sucked into the middle of the field, which gives Gomez and Moreno room to work.  The word has been out for several years that United was going to ram their attack up the middle of the field, so teams just plugged up the middle and took their chances if United ever tried to attack up the wings (never happened).  But United’s starting to look like it has a more complete offense already with two goals resulting from far post runs and the team using thier ability to pass the ball across the field via long diagonal passes.

Taking words to heart

A couple of weeks ago, the Nest Liner noticed that Gomez seemingly didn’t use Pontius and Wallace.  Against Dallas that changed completely, as the former MVP worked well with the young players for the first time this year.  Hopefuly, it’s from the coaching staff noticing the same things on tape, and not from reading the Nest Liner.

Compressed Week

United’s in a stretch where they’re playing 3 games in 8 days.  Wednesday, the team plays Kansas, Saturday, they’re back in the District to take on the horde from the Great White North, Toronto.  Wednesday’s game will be televised on Comcast Sports Net (get to a viewing party if you can), because the Caps game is a national exclusive on Versus.  But Saturday’s game will not be televised by CSN because the Caps will be, so get to the game.