RIVER OR LIFE: Attacking midfielders

We've covered the forwards, and we've covered the front office. Heck, our front office results actually have been 100% correct so far, with Tom Soehn leaving the team and Kasper and Payne set to return. We'll have to wait a while to find out if our forward results are correct, but in the meantime, let's see what everyone has to say about our attacking midfielders.

Just remember, a vote for River means that you want the player banished from DC, and a vote for Life means you hope to see the player back next year.

The biggest question before the season was whether Christian Gomez would be more like his usual self in United uniform, when he used to earn around 10 goals and 10 assists every year, or more like himself the year before in a Rapids unifom, when he earned only 3 goals and 6 assists. The answer was somewhere in between.

poll by twiigs.com

Santino Quaranta started the season fast with 5 assists in the first third of the season, and earned a return to the US National Team picture with an appearance in the Gold Cup. But he faded later in the year, and injury forced his season to an early end.

poll by twiigs.com

The MLS Rookie of the Year candidate Chris Pontius was tied for the team lead in games played, but more importantly, he also won the prestigious Benny Award for the highest average player rating on this blog.

poll by twiigs.com

Scoring just 2 goals and 4 assists in each of the past two seasons, Fred has found the MLS to be a bit more difficult than Australia's A-League. Fred is a talented player who has never really fit into DC United's system. Hard to say whether or not that's really his fault though.

poll by twiigs.com

One of the few benefits of finishing so poorly in 2008 was that we received an allocation slot high enough to acquire Danny Szetela when he returned to the league mid-season. Szetela had an apparent falling out with the coaching staff and only had limited playing time, mostly outside of league play.

poll by twiigs.com

DC's third round draft pick Brandon Barklage had a very promising start to his MLS career, scoring goals in two consecutive Open Cup matches, and looking good in relief of Gomez as a central attacking midfielder in his 4 brief MLS appearances, before falling to injury.

poll by twiigs.com

Ely Allen was selected in the second round by the Galaxy and started 11 matches for them last season. This former U-18 National Team player didn't see any time in MLS this season, but did have a few appearances in the Champions League.

poll by twiigs.com

DC United lose to Toluca, 3-1

I had my doubts about this lineup going in because it just seemed way too defensive. I'm in favor of continuing with the 4-4-2 formation for the duration of this tournament, but my vision of a 4-4-2 involves attacking wingers, and maybe a creative attacking central midfielder. McTavish and Allen aren't really what you think of in terms of attacking wingers, and Andrew Jacobson isn't really the most creative CAM either.

This would have been the perfect match for Danny Szetela. I understand he's in the doghouse, and obviously Coach Soehn knows more about why than any of us so I give him the benefit of the doubt, but it really would have been nice to see his creative skills on the field in place of any one of the previously mentioned midfielders. And if not Szetela, either Gomez, Fred, or Quaranta should have started this match. Oh yeah, and I guess Ely Allen is ahead of John DiRaimondo on the depth chart for now? I guess that might have changed after this match.

As for the back line, I'm fine with Namoff-Jakovic-Burch as our top lineup and Habarugira-James-John as our B squad. I'm also perfectly fine with Marc Burch as a CB in a four-man back. But if we have to add one of the A squad members to the B line each match, do we really want it to be Burch? Why is Burch more capable than Jakovic or Namoff at playing two matches per week?

As I stated, I liked the four-man back line. But from the 28th minute on, I was calling for Gomez to come in for Habarugira. Dude as AWFUL.


1. I've said before that some of DC United's best moments in 2009 have come from the combination of Santino Quaranta and Chris Pontius. These two immediately connected for a goal as soon as the Phoenix entered the match. I wonder if Soehn has been misusing these two in the regular season when he often puts Quaranta up top and Pontius on the right wing. It really should be the other way around.


1. Goal-saving play by Julius James in the 80th minute, and pretty consistently good defense throughout the match. It looked like he might have been the competent backup CB we've been looking for, that is until the deflection that led to the third goal.

2. There have been some mentions on this blog and others about the seemingly increasing number of giveaways from Clyde Simms this year. Well if you watch him closely, you'll see that he wins more balls than he loses. And winning balls is what the man is paid to do.


1. I've been a little bit of a Greg Janicki apologist over the past week, because I have tendency to believe that his terrible match against Marathon was more of an aberation than the norm. Because we've seen better from him before. Thefore I believe that the mistake by David Habarugira that resulted in an early goal for Toluca was much worse than the mistake by Janicki that resulted in an early goal for Marathon. Janicki's error seemed like more of a fluke mistake. I just don't get the impression that Habarugira knows any better! Maybe Wicks should have done better to call him off, but there's no way that goal would have happened with Namoff or Jakovic in that position instead. Habarugira also made several bad passes, left a man unmarked at the back post that led to a free header on goal in the 33rd minute, and earned a really bad yellow card early in the second half. I wonder which defender will have an awful match in our next Champions League appearance? My money is on Avery John.

2. Josh Wicks is usually pretty vocal, but I didn't see or hear him yelling "KEEPER!" to Habarugira on the first goal. He also misplayed the ball in the 80th minute, forcing a great goal-saving tackle by James. And the third goal was a bit unlucky, but if I'm going to blame any player for it, I might put some blame on Wicks.

3. Marc Burch got beat on the winning goal, plain and simple.

4. Removing Ely Allen at the 33 minute mark was more than just a tactical substitution in my mind, as the commentator suggested. I just can't think of one positive contribution that he made. At least it was good to see that it only took Soehn one third of the match to realize how poor his starting lineup was.

5. The more I think about it, the more I'm against the starting lineup used by Tom Soehn in this match. I've been definitively and consistently against the "Fire Soehn" crowd for all of 2009. This is the first match when I've began to consider how much longer I want him coaching this team. I just don't see how this lineup really had any chance of winning.

The next week and a half might be the most important of the season for us. Our road match against Chicago on Saturday is winnable. If they can lose 2-0 to the Beckham-less and Lewis-less Galaxy last week, I think we have a good chance of earning at least a point. And then Wednesday is of course the Open Cup Final (now offering $10 student tickets!), which has suddenly become the most important match we'll play in 2009 based on our nascent rivalry with the Sounders. The week ends with another winnable road match against FC Dallas. Earlier this week I wrote about how a long line of poor officiating has kept us from earning points this year. Now would be a really nice time for kharma to pay us back and shoot some luck in our direction for once.

Roster reset

With DC United in the process of finalizing a loan for Tiyi Shipalane from the Harrisburg City Islanders, I was pretty darn confused as to the status of our roster, since we'll now have 27 players listed on our first team roster when the league maximum is 24. Sounds like a good time for a late season roster reset!

Senior (20):
1 Wicks, 2 John, 3 Habarugira, 4 James, 5 Burch, 6 Jakovic, 7 Janicki, 8 McTavish, 9 Namoff, 10 Szetela, 11 Fred, 12 Gomez, 13 Jacobson, 14 Olsen, 15 Pontius, 16 Quaranta, 17 Simms, 18 Emilio, 19 Khumalo, 20 Moreno.

Developmental (4):
1 Kocic, 2 Wallace, 3 DiRaimondo, 4 Allen

Brandon Barklage has been placed on season-ending injured reserve, which freed up a spot for Ely Allen on the developmental roster.

David Habarugira was brought in under MLS's "Short-Term Injury Replacements" program (Rule II.K) for Ange N'Silu on 8/14/09, making N'Silu ineligible for at least 6 league matches.

So with Shipalane on his way south on I-83, United is going to have to make a roster move. And what of Adam Smarte? The Liberian PDL striker who has been training with the team for over a week now? The popular opinion is of course to overreact to the most recent matches and call for the sacrifice of Greg Janicki, but I don't think I see United cutting him just because of one awful performance. The more likely move I think will be to move Boyzzz Khumalo over to that short-term disabled list also. After all, how many South African wingers can you have on the active roster at once?

DC United lose at Marathon, 3-1

A loss is pretty much what we expected on the road in Honduras, but it's disappointing all the same because it could have been so much more. And we're once again reminded of 2008. If you're unfortunate enough to recall the 2008 Champions' Cup and Superliga, you'll remember that DC United looked to be of fairly equal caliber to most of their opponents, but ultimately flunked out of the tournaments due to several individual mistakes and unlucky breaks.

Well the same thing happened tonight, only this time there was one lone target of blame: Greg Janicki. Which is really too bad because he showed a lot of potential towards the end of last year. And once again we're left wondering, as we do in all international tournaments, what could have been if our league allowed larger rosters and a bigger salary cap. Sure would have been nice if we had another reserve forward on our roster to bring in for Emilio late in the match. Marathon on the other hand substituted in multiple additional forwards, and we could only counter by bringing on extra defensive midfields. Not exactly the best tactics for a win.


1. Luciano Emilio looked like a freakin' warrior! Scoring and bloodying his face all in the same motion. Even at the 93 minute mark, Emilio was still going at goal. This performance just might earn Luci a Grosy nomination.

2. Maybe it took him a little while to settle in, but Andrew Jacobson has looked much better the past couple weeks. Surprisingly, he took on more of an attacking midfield role than Moreno for a lot of this match.


1. I had my doubts, but the starting lineup used by Tom Soehn turned out to be pretty darn effective. Other than one massive mistake by Janicki, we escaped the first half scoreless, and held our own until the final 10 minutes. The four-man back line worked exactly how it should in limiting chances, and our midfield won most of its battles. I do question the tactics towards the end though. Mainly, I didn't understand taking out Habarugira in favor of Simms. This move forced Simms to play in the backline, where he has not played in over two years. If we needed to insert another defender, why not Burch? Or why not move McTavish back instead, who at least played defense in 2008.

2. In our first glance at David Habarugira (Spanglish translation: "Habarooga") and Julius James, we saw some things to be happy about, and some things that made us nervous. The Habarugira dude has got speed, and likes getting forward. And when he does get forward, he doesn't leave huge gaps behind him like Avery John does. But he also committed a lot of fouls, including a yellow card that could have been a red with some other referees that we've faced. James was decent, and definitely had his highs and lows. He almost gave up an own goal in the first 10 minutes, but also started the sequence with a header that led to Emilio's goal.

3. The organization of Jaime Moreno and Ben Olsen was precisely what was missing from this team on Saturday.


1. It's not often that a single player is responsible for all three goals allowed, but that was the case tonight with Greg Janicki. He made a terrible mistake in misplaying the first goal, and his poor slide tackle in the box set up the penalty kick for the third goal. Marathon's second goal was a bit more deserved, but it was still against the run of play, and I still feel like Jakovic would have stopped it if he were playing instead.

2. Did you happen to notice that every good chance Marathon had in the first half came from their right flank? That would be the territory of Ely Allen and Avery John. Allen had a couple decent touches early, but was ultimately beaten too often, and John had just too many giveaways, although he did alright defensively for most of the match.

So hopefully the team can keep their heads held high going into Saturday's home match against the Galaxy. Hopefully we won't be starstruck and make the same stupid mistakes against Beckham and Donovan. And let's keep in mind that this could have easily been a 1-1 result if not for those mistakes. This team still has a lot left to fight for in the CCL. I'm very interested to see how we do against Marathon in the home leg on 9/24.

DC United lose vs Real Madrid, 3-0

If you think about it, this result actually makes a lot of sense. DC United's starters at full fitness were able to admirably shut down Real Madrid's starters for the entire first half. But as our players grew more fatigued in the 95 degree heat, our defense was worn down by some of the world's best players. You could see this coming when Real Madrid turned to their bench to bring in substitutes like Arjen Robben and Christoph Metzelder, and United countered with Milos Kocic and Ely Allen. And once DC allowed Madrid to score their first, as has happened to our club before, the flood gates opened, the levees broke, the dam collapsed, and any other water related clichés you can think of.

Hopefully, DC United won over a few new fans yesterday. If our average attendance this season is somewhere in the range of 16-18 thousand, yet 72,368 showed up to see Real Madrid, it's easy to do the math here. I don't know that we're going to sell very many new season ticket packages to those 56,000 additional attendees, but maybe some of them wind up going to one or two DCU matches a year? It would have been nice to see United get a few more chances on goal. Zero shots on target in the first half doesn't make for an exciting match to the casual fan. And it's a bit of a shame that the most exciting moment for DC came from Christian Gomez scoring while clearly offside.

I'm with Goff when he says that player ratings are tough for this kind of match. I'm hesitant to give anyone a low rating after shutting out Madrid for 45 minutes, and no one really separated themselves from the pack in either direction. Therefore we're left with…

and:
None

1. Josh Wicks, Greg Janicki, and Marc Burch were all strong candidates for Top Shelf at the halftime whistle. Wicks made two or three really good saves in the first half, before getting beat twice by Higuain in the second. Janicki's first half may have been his best of the season, but he failed to stop Higuain's run straight down the middle of the field for the first goal. Burch also looked good breaking up several plays in the first half, but was utterly abused by Robben in the second.

2. Hopefully this will be our last time seeing Rodney Wallace in Simms' CDM role for a little while. He was seen running behind the play in two out of the three goals. But he was tasked with keeping Kaka scoreless in the first half, and succeeded at that.

3. It's become customary for me to rate new acquisitions in their first appearances for United (see John, DiRaimondo, and Szetela). How about Ely Allen getting his first appearance in a DC jersey against Real Madrid? Allen had some positive touches and didn't look out of place on the field with the rest of our reserves. He also gets credit for being the leading candidate to win a Bryan Namoff lookalike contest.

So with this heavily promoted friendly behind them, DC United now has six days of rest before heading up to Toronto for an important league match. What's troubling is that this six day break is the longest break that our players will get until after the match on 9/15. The coaching staff will have some pretty tough decisions to make in weighing starters for the Toronto match, and then a long trip down to Marathon just three days later. I'm not going to go so far as to call TFC on Saturday a "must-win", but I think it might be a "must-not-lose" match. With them trailing us by only 1 point with 10 games remaining, we cannot let Toronto emerge with a full 3 points.