A couple of stray thoughts about last night's last-minute loss to United, in advance of watching the recording of the match, which I might not ever get to with all the Euro matches.
- I would have never guessed that, from the pair of red cards, we would miss Brandon Prideaux more than DC would miss Gallardo. As much as I'm a fan of Dasan Robinson, he was rusty to the point where it badly affected the cohesion of the back line, and I think he may have been involved in the breakdowns on both goals. The first one had two defenders both about three yards away from Moreno instead of staying tight on him in the six-yard box, and the second had a double-team gone wrong -- it looked like both defenders got in each other's way, giving Emilio room to take the shot. I don't know which two defenders were involved in those two plays, though. They were both on the right side, so Robinson was either involved, or should have been.
- The Fire are still plagued by lack of depth on the wings. Justin Mapp's exit in the first half after picking up an injury and John Thorrington's after the obvious substitution following the red card left Chicago pretty clueless advancing the ball through the midfield in the second half.
- To that end, Calen Carr is a forward, not a midfielder. He looked lost on the right side, and full credit to Denis Hamlett for realizing that and pushing him forward with the Stephen King-for-Chad Barrett sub, because we looked much more dangerous after that. The question, then, is who should he have put in for Mapp at halftime? Carr didn't seem like a bad choice at the time. Therein lies the problem.
- I didn't see the (non-)foul that led to Mapp's exit and Blanco's yellow card, so I have absolutely nothing to say about that.
- Has Chad Barrett really, truly turned the corner, or is he the living embodiment of the law of averages? I still think he's trade bait in order to get McBride back home. Anything he can do, Tomasz Frankowski can do, but Barrett had the run of form while the Polish striker was injured. And if we don't need to use him to get an allocation or a Designated Player spot, we should use him as leverage to get a wing midfielder from a Western Conference team. My MLS wishlist at the moment is Brian Mullan, Ronnie O'Brien and Stuart Holden, roughly in that order.
- I want to see the goal differential when John Thorrington is in the lineup versus when he isn't.
- Bakary Soumare made at least two wonderful tackles, although the second was spoiled by a foul that I'm going to have to assume was committed by a teammate coming over to help, because Baky was sublime, and legal to boot.
- I caught up with some Section 8 folks after the game -- my mental picture of Tom was totally wrong -- and some of them are in full "sky is falling" mode. They're wrong. Yeah, bad result, no question there, but not the end of the world.