CCL - February 15 - Santos de Guapiles (Away)
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
I think he's saying Keaton would play if they're up big late. Which I agree with -- he's probably not starting if he just resumed full-team activities, but hopefully we have a big lead and he can get a few minutes at the end.
I can't believe we're two days from the start of the season. We won the Cup just barely two months ago! This is insane. Hopefully the coaching staff and performance team will be able to keep these guys upright for the next nine months.
Ah. That makes sense.
Yeah, I think he features at least 15 minutes if we're on a comfortable lead. From the training videos it seems he's participating in the scrimmages so I don't see why he can't feature in a real game, unless it's about rustiness.
I will say is that a lot of teams in Central America love shooting long distance shots in open play. And Johnson struggles with those at times.
they were bossed by forge FC in the qualifying playoff. our ex player kwame awuah looked like a world class player in the highlights of that game. lol.
i don't think we should go into any game thinking it's a piece of cake. we should go in ready to destroy and i think the boys have that mentality. but i'm not too concerned santos is going to out play us
Trying to think of when Johnson has given up a goal from long distance in open play and I'm currently drawing blanks.
vs the revs last year at RBA. Bou from distance. to be fair, he was probably shielded by our guys and saw it late. this wasn't a bobble by him and more of a failure of closing down Bou before he could get the shot off.
There were a few very early last year:
- very first goal of the season by Hines-Ike in DC
- Nani game 4 in Orlando
- the Bou goal M moogoo mentioned
And to be clear, even when you combine the long range open play goals by Johnson with the ones off of set pieces, the point I tried to make the first third of 2021 was not that Johnson is generally bad at long range goals. Rather, I tried to argue that neither the club as a whole nor Ronnie should be blamed for the disappointing results, because they were mostly due to randomly poor goalkeeper play they could not control. Add up the points lost against Washington, Orlando, Columbus twice, New England, and Montreal (Barazza) in the first eleven games due long range shots allowed plus a bad GK error in Montreal, and NYCFC could very well have had 25 points after 11 games instead of 17. I also never said I thought Johnson was generally poor against those sort of shots. I said he was playing poorly, and argued that this streak was likely to stop because what we were seeing was a random cluster of unlikely events happening in close proximity to one another. This happens all the time but we tend to want to find meaning in it when it's just a random cluster. And them, in fact, Johnson mostly stopped giving up those long range goals and played more like he had the previous 3-4 seasons.
Unfortunately, then the team barely scored for about 14 games which was a completely different issue.
Unfortunately, then the team barely scored for about 14 games which was a completely different issue.
If any MLS team has a great chance, it's us. I'd have to think that should we get past Santos like expected, we'd face off against either Colorado or Comunicaciones and be the favorite again. León are not the strongest side and I think that Seattle could eliminate them. Either way, I think the semi-final would be a tough matchup, but one in which we could prevail. I'd give that a 50/50 shot.
The other half has Cruz Azul and the Revs. That will be a good matchup, although I do want to see how well New England does after losing Tajon Buchanan and picking up several members of the Arena reunion tour gang.
Cruz Azul would have to be the overall favorite, but if Taty is on and we avoid injuries and play like we did in the playoffs, we could pull this off.
If we keep Taty around through the qualifiers, we should be a contender. We have depth everywhere EXCEPT RB. Parks coming back, Heber MAYBE helps.
I would say not having real wingers makes me nervous, but we have the ability to grind our 1-0 wins. You can almost pencil in Taty for a goal in every series.
I would say not having real wingers makes me nervous, but we have the ability to grind our 1-0 wins. You can almost pencil in Taty for a goal in every series.
Per Ronny,
Alfredo and Anton not available tomorrow. Alfredo got COVID in Mexico and isn't with the team.
Parks is back with the team, everyone else is available.
Alfredo and Anton not available tomorrow. Alfredo got COVID in Mexico and isn't with the team.
Parks is back with the team, everyone else is available.
