No Margin For Error

We’ve been calling the last four or five MLS games ‘Must Win’, and then the team has flubbed the chances and has forced the final two league games to really be must win.  The first of those was this weekend against the league leading Columbus Crew.  Oh, and United was missing Namoff (concussion), Quaranta (broken foot – announced last week and was the most devistating news prior to Charlie Davies’ accident), Olsen (red card suspension – for his retaliatatory free kick strike that apparently paralyzed a Chivas USA player for 3 minutes), Wicks (head, shoulder, knees and toes) and Pontius (yellow card accumulation).

Match

Something United has struggled with mightily the last half of the season is consistency and balance.   They can’t get the offense going without sacrificing defense, and when they shore up the defense they can’t get anything going on offense.  Hence the flipping back and forth between the 3-5-2 (offensive) and 4-4-2 (defensive) formations.  Against Columbus, United trotted out the 3-5-2, which is really the only way to get Gomez on the field with any hope of effectiveness.  So Lawson Vaughn was brought out of the starting lineup in favor of Devon McTavish, Boyzzz was inserted up top, while Simms and Jacobsen took care of the dirty work in the middle of the field. 

Also on the field was Goalkeeper Steve Cronin, who joined the team this week on loan from Portland.  Before the game started the team gathered at midfield, was part of that conversation Cronin, shaking hands and saying "Hi, I’m Steve and you are…?"

Despite coming to United from a lower division team, Cronin’s an MLS vet that got the shaft in LA after their horrendous circus-like experiments that may have included a six year old, and a llama in their defense.

Tough challenge, though, to come to a new team in cold and wet conditions.  Though after adjusting to the wet ball, Steve handled himself quite well and turned in the best performance by a DC United keeper in quite some time.

On the offensive front, the team actually attacked fairly effectively in the first half.  Often finding space, but just not connecting on several final passes.  Though Boyzzz seized the moment with some free space and ran at the defense and slotted a nice through ball for Emilio who found time in his busy day to actually run onto a ball and chipped the keeper to score his tenth goal of the season. 

Other opportunities came, including Gomez’s shot from beyond the 18 that squirted under the Will Hesmer, the Crew goalkeeper, but wide of the post. 

The second half saw a slightly different story, as United moved into a more defensive posture, taking out Devon McTavish and bringing on Vaughn, as well as sliding Gomez to forward and Boyzzz to the right side of midfield as the team switched to a 4-4-2.  The Crew came back with the intention of attacking and United with the intention of defending. 

United also switched from small quick passes on the ground to long hopeful passes through the air.  Neglecting several important things:  1) The weather conditions favor the short passing as long passes through the air will skip and take off once hitting the wet grass. 2) Columbus was much taller than United 3) United generally sucks in the air. 4) Emilio seemed very content to stand still in the puddle that formed between the center circle and the attacking penalty area.

Two more moves were made to solidify United’s formation, Danny Szetela came on to replace Boyzz, and Jamie Moreno replaced Gomez.  Moreno’s appearance gave him yet one more all-time MLS record: Most Appearances with a single team.  Jamie has 307 appearances (and counting).  See this and this for Dan Steinberg’s related Bog posts…..or see this Nest Liner post (written in April 2008) which has a lot of the same info that Dan has in his second post.

Szetela brought some good two-way play to the wing, but he brought something else to the field.  The concept of running off the ball.  He frequently ran into dangerous positions when others had the ball and looked to get passes, and when he had the ball there were times you could see him pointing to a player to move someplace useful.  Obviously Danny (currently the most popular Danny in DC pro sports these days) hasn’t read the team rules where passes aren’t into space where you can run onto the ball and that there must be 19 touches within the area before a shot can be taken.

Regardless, United gutted out a win against a tough opponent.  Couple that with some favorable results around the league and United is tied for eighth place going into the final week of play.  Go the www.behindthebadge.com’s breakdown of the playoff scenarios here and here.  Because Kyle Sheldon and his minions burned some late night oil and brain cells to figure it all out and the Nest Liner is content to trust their analysis of the 12436 scenarios.  It’s complicated and goofy, but really it all hinges upon United winning at Kansas.

Looking Forward…

United’s very long 2009 campaign boils down to two games….Tuesday at Toluca to see if it can move on in CONCACAF Champions League play, and Saturday against Kansas City to see if it can get into the playoffs.