second one was soft enough to be sponsored by Charmin.
MLS - August 4 - Chicago (Away)
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
second one was soft enough to be sponsored by Charmin.
The one argument in favor of targeting the League Cup is you need to win 3 games and that's it, possibly against other teams who do not make it a priority until maybe the final. Meanwhile, the connection between August games in Chicago or Toronto to NYCFC performance in the playoffs in November is tenuous at best, so I don't think we are giving up much in that regard. Finally, while I don't think we've conceded the Shield, it's somewhat distant, and I don't think it's a current priority. A bye and home field would be nice, but MLS playoffs are littered with the corpses of teams who had both and failed, including us.
Also, we don't yet know whether we actually will rotate for Toronto and play 1st choice team against Pumas. I agree I'd rather see additional rotation regardless, but I'm fine with whatever approach is taken to the League Cup.
Also, we don't yet know whether we actually will rotate for Toronto and play 1st choice team against Pumas. I agree I'd rather see additional rotation regardless, but I'm fine with whatever approach is taken to the League Cup.
They waxed two of the best teams in the conference and had a bad game on short rest on the road. They'll be fine. They're still one of the best teams in the league.
My thinking too. Second was fairly soft. Not clear to me whether Toledo thought it was rough or was tactical, as it seemed to fall short on both measures. Like you, I thought the first one was a yellow initially. On replay, it was clear that Parks never grabbed the player, only reached out and brushed him and the Chicago player fell immediately - he dove. And while Toledo didn't get a replay, he did get to see it from 20 feet away.
Where are our big signing see brought in for depth? What’s that? They don’t play?
Joke
Talles came in injured, they tried to see if he could play through it, and he couldn't. He's young, best to get him right. Santi is off to a slow start, but he's finding his footing. Thiago has been a revelation.
They have one of the best rosters in the league.
How is that possible if we can’t or don’t rotate?
Saying we have the best roster in the league and then also saying we lost because we played too many games in too many days is farcical.
I would tend to agree that saying we have the best roster in the league is a bit much. It strikes me as “homerism”. Seattle recently had like, half the starting 11 in diapers and they won the game (on the road?) The Chicago match would seem to illustrate something NYCFC is lacking whether it’s depth, championship level coaching or a truly championship level starting eleven.
This doesn’t mean I don’t think the team is good, I’m just not sold on it being the best in the league. I am, however, looking forward to having my mind changed.
Seattle has match winners across the roster and has proven that it can win with its depth.
NE has an argument for the best striker, playmaker and GK in the league (those things win you a lot even when the rest of the roster is not performing).
NYCFC doesn’t have a proven player who can put the team on its back (like Josef in past years, Vela, etc) when the collective is not working. NYCFC, when it’s clicking, is damn good but is too inconsistent.
I think often times, sports fans need to identify something wrong as to why their team lost.
IMO, the draw at Chicago was as simple as NYCFC played a poor game. That happens. Every team does it.
IMO, the draw at Chicago was as simple as NYCFC played a poor game. That happens. Every team does it.
True. The following are also true, though in the category of things I believe with high certainty but cannot prove:
- If you asked all soccer fans whether the sport is subject to a wide variance between who played better and results, I believe you would get a substantial majority who agree. But when those same people analyze individual games, most completely forget this and cannot accept that sometimes bad results just happen to better teams.
- Beyond single game results, fans are even more reluctant to accept "luck" over even tiny samples, even when every statistician in the world agrees that the sample size is small and extremely prone to seemingly irrational results.
- When analyzing play, fans take all good results and goals scored as given, then pick apart the misses to decide how many more their team or player should have scored. If a player scores twice on low percentage shots, fans will still gravely rue the sitter he missed, even if he outscored the percentages as a whole.
- At the same time, once they have decided that their team or a certain player is not as good as it should be, they will come up with reasons why the good results were lucky or outliers and don't count.
- If a team scores in 25 straight games, when the streak ends they will try to come up with reasons why the game that ended the streak is based on some deep, inherent fault, and not something that inevitably happens even to the best teams.
- You can outscore your xG by 4.5 goals in the second half of 2020, then under score by 4 goals in the first half of 2021, and people will explain why the coach (or roster or individual players) get no credit for one but blame for the other (or vice versa depending on their preconceived notion). In fact, both were largely the result of chance.
- Everyone should read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, and not even mostly for sports.
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I basically agree with this even though I mentioned the Chicago draw in my post. As much as I agree with the “teams have poor games and it’s nothing more than that” sentiment, I think it’s also worth looking at (especially if we are talking about “the best roster”) why a team like NYCFC often fails when there is an opportunity to either win a playoff game or get a win to move up in the standings and place themselves in contention for top dog.
I think there have been a couple games this year when a win would have placed us considerably higher in the standings but the team couldn’t find a way to win. A win against a team one spot away from dead last in the conference (at the time) would have moved NYCFC to second place and 7 points behind the top team in the league with 2 games in hand. That’s the type of game I think this team needs to win at some point on the way to proving it’s one of the top teams in the league. Right now NYCFC is in the top 10 so I guess you could say we have one of the best rosters in the league but it kind of doesn’t mean a whole lot other than we don’t have one of the worst rosters in the league.
If you like Innumeracy, I highly recommend The Drunkard’s Walk
