MLS - November 7 - Philadelphia (Home)

All in all, not a major worry as our defense did incredibly well the second half. I know he's gotten some shit on the forums, but Morales played a hell of a game being the only CM for 70+ minutes. He was feeling the currywurst fueling his soul in each and every tackle and interception on Sunday.

And he tracked back a LOT. There were period where he was one of the fastest players back to join the defense and I made notes of it. I was pretty impressed on that front
 
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Back to the food. How are we going to host a playoff game when the stadium ran out of salt and ketchup?
And they only had half the windows open, at least on the 200 level, compared to previous matches, with none of the smaller counters open at all except for one popcorn one (no pretzels, knishes, etc.). The lines were ridiculous. I'm glad it was an afternoon match and not at dinnertime because I just skipped it.
 
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Back to the food. How are we going to host a playoff game when the stadium ran out of salt and ketchup?
And they only had half the windows open, at least on the 200 level, compared to previous matches, with none of the smaller counters open at all except for one popcorn one (no pretzels, knishes, etc.). The lines were ridiculous. I'm glad it was an afternoon match and not at dinnertime because I just skipped it.
No kosher option open either. My dad went to get some garlic fries at the 20th minute and came back just in time for half time. It's as if they forgot how to host 15-20k people now that they've been with like 10k the whole season.
 
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No kosher option open either. My dad went to get some garlic fries at the 20th minute and came back just in time for half time. It's as if they forgot how to host 15-20k people now that they've been with like 10k the whole season.
There was great Kosher food at Legends. If the playoff match is on Sunday, reach out to a ticket rep about getting a Legends pass if they are offering it for the game. Explain you can't get good Kosher options in the stadium.
 
There was great Kosher food at Legends. If the playoff match is on Sunday, reach out to a ticket rep about getting a Legends pass if they are offering it for the game. Explain you can't get good Kosher options in the stadium.
They'll probably try soliciting me for a season ticket though, no? lol. Though that would be nice. How much is Legends usually?
 
The xG on the Union goal is just nuts. It looks to be something like .8 goals at least - isn’t that the same as a penalty? They got .8 out of their 1.4 expected goals from that one shot when playing up a man for 70 minutes.
MLS site said it was something over 80% chance (~83%??), which I believe is about 10% more than a PK (70%-75%). Makes sense since he was 5 feet away, but yeah just an interesting scenario where the offside trap looks REAL bad when our defenders are all behind the ball... and their players.
 
This team should be pumped up and ready to rock those glamorous southern MLS darlings.
It’s the Bronx 2021 5 stripees. If you thought 2019 in the Boogie Down was rough
 
That was one incredible effort from Taty on that goal. He had no business getting to that cross and putting any reasonable shot on frame.
I am surprised nobody else (including me) said this. This wasn't a cross to an open guy at the back post. He got up off the turf and covered a lot of ground to get to that ball. And then he outjumped the defender and directed the ball perfectly. It's the kind of goal that's not flashy enough to nominate for goal of the week, but it's harder than most winners of that award.

And it got him the Golden Boot.
 
I am surprised nobody else (including me) said this. This wasn't a cross to an open guy at the back post. He got up off the turf and covered a lot of ground to get to that ball. And then he outjumped the defender and directed the ball perfectly. It's the kind of goal that's not flashy enough to nominate for goal of the week, but it's harder than most winners of that award.

And it got him the Golden Boot.
I really, really dislike the whole "X player wanted it more" blanket statement that gets thrown around way too much but this particular play really looked like a guy (Taty) who really, really wanted that goal.

ETA: that's a lot of "really"'s in that sentence.
 
I really, really dislike the whole "X player wanted it more" blanket statement that gets thrown around way too much but this particular play really looked like a guy (Taty) who really, really wanted that goal.

ETA: that's a lot of "really"'s in that sentence.
I'm more than 100% sure he found out at half time about Ola's goals, you could see it with how he played in the second half.
 
I know he's gotten some shit on the forums, but Morales played a hell of a game being the only CM for 70+ minutes. He was feeling the currywurst fueling his soul in each and every tackle and interception on Sunday.
Update to my most recent post. Here is NYCFC's PPG in games in which each player appeared for 45 minutes or more. The overall team PPG was exactly 1.500:

Screen Shot 2021-11-09 at 9.04.37 AM.png

Two surprises at the top of the list. The 20 games in which Morales played 45 minutes or more (of which 9H 11A) are a pretty fair reflection of the schedule as a whole. He played 45 minutes in 6 of 9 games during the Sept-October swoon so he didn't just get lucky with a well timed injury or anything. Notably, one game he sat out in that stretch was the 3-3 draw at home against Dallas where the team could not hold a lead. He also missed the May 2-1 home loss to Columbus. The only game Morales played at home in which NYC conceded more than 1 goal was the 3-2 loss to New England in June.

And how about Mr. Moralez, with a sneaky solid record I think many of us underestimated, though I believe his ratings improved somewhat late. It's no surprise to see the core of the defense in the next 3 spots. Taty only played <45 minutes in 2 games, in which the team earned 1 point. Can't take too much from that and this clearly does not reflect his full value. Tinny suffered by playing through the team slump and then missing the late surge. I excluded the newcomers because they all missed the early part of the season when the team had its longest solid stretch and that depressed their numbers, and Magno only had a handful of games with >45 minutes. I also think we have to consider that part of the team's problems this year was incorporating a lot of midseason newcomers. Which you can use to blame Ronny or excuse him. Or, it just happened.

This is an imperfect metric (all metrics are imperfect). I think most, including me, expected Morales lower and Parks higher. Maybe there are reasons out of each players' control that pulled Pasta Sauce up and Big Bird down. But this is what it is.

I've been enjoying my respite from posting and despite this will return to that. Might come back after some playoff games. Breaks are good. Let's win some playoff games.
 
Update to my most recent post. Here is NYCFC's PPG in games in which each player appeared for 45 minutes or more. The overall team PPG was exactly 1.500:

View attachment 11543

Two surprises at the top of the list. The 20 games in which Morales played 45 minutes or more (of which 9H 11A) are a pretty fair reflection of the schedule as a whole. He played 45 minutes in 6 of 9 games during the Sept-October swoon so he didn't just get lucky with a well timed injury or anything. Notably, one game he sat out in that stretch was the 3-3 draw at home against Dallas where the team could not hold a lead. He also missed the May 2-1 home loss to Columbus. The only game Morales played at home in which NYC conceded more than 1 goal was the 3-2 loss to New England in June.

And how about Mr. Moralez, with a sneaky solid record I think many of us underestimated, though I believe his ratings improved somewhat late. It's no surprise to see the core of the defense in the next 3 spots. Taty only played <45 minutes in 2 games, in which the team earned 1 point. Can't take too much from that and this clearly does not reflect his full value. Tinny suffered by playing through the team slump and then missing the late surge. I excluded the newcomers because they all missed the early part of the season when the team had its longest solid stretch and that depressed their numbers, and Magno only had a handful of games with >45 minutes. I also think we have to consider that part of the team's problems this year was incorporating a lot of midseason newcomers. Which you can use to blame Ronny or excuse him. Or, it just happened.

This is an imperfect metric (all metrics are imperfect). I think most, including me, expected Morales lower and Parks higher. Maybe there are reasons out of each players' control that pulled Pasta Sauce up and Big Bird down. But this is what it is.

I've been enjoying my respite from posting and despite this will return to that. Might come back after some playoff games. Breaks are good. Let's win some playoff games.
I'm actually surprised to see Maxi that high! And I think none of us are really too surprised to see the Tinnerholm metric... We've all noticed that this season something's been off. I hope it'll be better next season, though we likely won't see him until later in the season. (Comeback player of the season incoming? ;) )
 
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