No surprises in Seattle: Punchless Dynamo fall 2:0.

Was this a surprise?  A team about to break the record for the longest unbeaten streak to begin this season in MLS history, playing at home against a team that has never beaten them there, and who has also yet to win a single road game this year.  Houston is 0-3-10 in Seattle all time and has been outscored a staggering 20-3 in 13 matchups.  Not only is Tab's squad abysmal on the road (and they have been for the better part of 4 years now), they are also notoriously bad on turf.  Add to that we are playing without a starting CB, his backup, and our best playmaker in the midfield against THIS team........and it's just a recipe for disaster.  

This year's version of Seattle has been exceptionally good defensively.  At 0.62 Goals Allowed/90, and with a save % of a staggering 86.8%, you had to almost assume that we would be lucky to sneak one in.  Seattle plays a deep 3-5-1-1-ish formation.  They are nearly impossible to counter, they rarely make mental mistakes, and they beat you to every ball.  Their back three lie in constant wait, and never push to high forward in transition.  It's a tuff formation to crack, but if you want to see how to do it you can watch any of the games my boys from Eintracht lost this year lol. Seattle never gets too far stretched enough to allow you to slip through, and rarely turns the ball over in a bad spot to get countered.  Their Wing Backs (Jimmy Medranda and Alex Roldan) rarely push too high and are great at setting back, and Seattle's three holding midfielders are rarely out of position.  Jao Paolo and Kelyn Rowe really make it click, as they fire the ball to streaking players and create numbers advantages in transition. They are extremely difficult to break down, mostly because they usually have six extremely defensive-minded players that are always in position, making it impossible to break them down through the middle and really difficult to hit them deep.  We did have chances, most of them were long and off target, but we managed to break through a couple of times to get quality looks.  Most of those wound-up right in the lap of goalkeeper Stefan Cleveland.  

This game was a microcosm of many things: (1) How much better they are than last year. (2) How short they are of actually being a serious playoff contender. (3) How they have to play absolutely perfect just to have a chance to compete.  There can be no Sam Junqua missing the header away, and then getting beat by his mark to the goal as a result of him whiffing on the header.  This whiff also caused Tim Parker to be a step slow to come over and help.  All of our backs (Lundkvist, Valentine, Junqua, and Bizama) are completely helpless against pace, and an entire section of our attack is missing because of it.  Overlapping play is tricky because it only takes a bad turnover to leave them helpless.  Our system is more about hiding their weaknesses than accentuating......whatever it is their strength is.  Lundkvist is a steady (but not great) defender who can occasionally play a nice ball downfield.  Valentine is a poor man's version of Lundkvist.  Junqua (playing at CB) has terrible anticipation and gets beat with regularity.  He's been on the wrong end of the last three goals we've given up, but also on the business end of the last goal we scored.  Our back play is less about who can help us win, and more about who is less likely to cost us a goal.  

There's no huge write-up or breakdown for this game. No fancy pictures or diagrams.  Just what this game deserves: bland and frustrating.  Seattle was better than us.  We fought hard, we played better than I expected, and it still wasn't enough.  For 60 minutes I actually thought we could pull out a draw, but long before the second goal went in I realized it wasn't going to happen.  We hopefully have made one more upgrade in Teenage Hadebe.  He needs to be quality, and he needs to play now.  What will Griffen Dorsey be?  Where will he play?  Will he play?  I have no idea.  He's played SEVEN MLS minutes. He played 22 games in USL League 1 with one goal and five assists. I'm hoping he is more Tyler Pasher than Nico Lemoine.  I'm hoping he's an upgrade at Right Back.  What this team will be?  Time will tell.

One Last Thing:

I decided to go back and look at all the games Memo has played on the wing this year.  The result?  It basically backs up what we are all saying.  6 games, 451 minutes, 1 goal, 1 assist, 2 Shot creating actions a game.  He has a terrible pressure rate from the wing, he's a below average passer from there, and he's getting off 1.3 crosses per game.  He can cut back inside and fire off shots, but he doesn't do it often enough.  What's interesting is we are 2-2-2 with him there, and there's basically no difference in our offensive/defensive output whether he plays wing or not.  While I don't like it, it's also not hurting us.  

Thanks again for reading.

#HoldItDown and stay #ForeverOrange

Brian