Holding Steady
We’re down here at Lumpys, where we’ve got a pretty good turnout, and the match is already underway. We’ll get straight to the RSL lineups and the action.
Real Salt Lake: GK - Nick Rimando; DF - Chris Wingert, David Horst, Nat Borchers, Robbie Russell; MF - Kyle Beckerman, Kenny Cutler, Javier Morales, Andy Williams; FW - Yura Movsisyan, Robbie Findley
18th minute: Just over 12 minutes in and the action has been fast and furious already. RSL’s looked very dangerous almost from the opening kick as a 2nd minute strike from Javi Morales was deflected just wide. Not to worry, however, just moments later, striker Yura Movsisyan made no mistake as he took a great through ball and finished far post past a diving Pat Onstad for the 1-0 Salt Lake lead. It was Yura’s first goal in an RSL kit since joining the squad late last season.
Just over ten minutes later, however, Houston midfielder Brian Mullan found himself behind the RSL defense and one-on-one with Nick Rimando. He beat the diving netminder and fired home to level the score at 1-1. This one’s shaping up to be an offensive shootout between two of the top defensive teams in the league.
25th minute: RSL will not be denied tonight! After a great save on another Yura shot, the deflection finds Javi at the top of the box and the Salt Lake playmaker makes no mistake as he fires home to retake the lead for Real. Great stuff from RSL so far.
30th minute: This is as back-and-forth as it gets. Houston drives down the right side and Mullan turns distributer as he lays off for Brian Ching, whose one-time left-footer finds the net past the outstretched arms of Rimando.
35th minute: And now it’s Houston’s turn to light it up. Midfielder Ricardo Clark collects the ball in the middle of the pitch and hits an absolute bomb into the upper 90 past a helpless Rimando. Wow! Fireworks galore in Houston.
44th minute: The Dynamo strike again. Ching streaks through the RSL box and lays off for Nate Jaqua who finishes underneath a sprawling Rimando. Unbelievable turn of events here.
Halftime: They’ve hit the break in Houston and despite a pair of excellent strikes, RSL will need an offensive explosion in the second half to salvage a result against a very good Dynamo squad. Six goals in the first half is unbelievable, especially considering the run of form both of these defenses have been on.
46th minute: They’ve just started the second half and Jason Kreis has made his first tactical change, replacing midfielder Kenny Cutler with Fabian Espindola. The move will likely push Beckerman back into a holding midfield role while Fabian moves out wide left.
61sth minute: Well, we’ve seen our longest stretch without a goal so far in this match. That’s not to say RSL hasn’t come out firing, quite the contrary actually. Onstad has had to come up big a couple times to keep Findley off the board in the last 15 minutes. And RSL newcomer, Clint Mathis, makes his return to the lineup, replacing Andy Williams on the right side of the midfield.
76th minute: Kreis has just used his final substitution as Kenny Deuchar replaced Yura up top. RSL continues to push hard, but has been unable to find the scoring touch so far in the second half. They’ll need some magic in the last 15 minutes to pull something out here.
82nd minute: They finally break through. Just minutes into his substitute appearance, the Good Doctor finds net as he finishes a great pass from Findley to pull RSL within one. Win, lose, or draw there’s definitely no quit in these guys tonight. They’re looking strong, let’s see what they can do.
End of Match: After a very hard fought 90 minutes, RSL finds themselves one goal short, as the four first half goals were simply too much to overcome. They fall for just the second time since May, but it’s enough to knock them out of first place. Real travels next weekend to Columbus, looking for a big three points on the road. We’re out for the night. Thanks to everyone who came out to Brewvies and Lumpys, it was a great atmosphere.
16 Aug 2008 RSL HQ
This match has to show how important it will be to sign Olave,
the defence is horrible without Olave. Horst is not ready and Cutler and Russel have made some terrible passes and we are only in the 45th minute.
Nice effort by Russell and Yura but since this team was not able to get a quality striker then RSL has to step up and pay
to keep the rights to Olave.
One Question for Kries?? WHAT DO YOU SEE IN CUTLER???
Time to get rid of Rimando… undersized, and have overperformed. Lets get Seitz in the game.
Travis, you need to shut your mouth about Nick! One game with a couple goals without Dema or olave and your ready to throw Nick under the bus? 4 goals in the previous ten games…sounds like some pretty damn good keeping to me. If anyone sucked it up tonight it was horst. Horst is the worst.
“Travis” none of those goals were the fault of Rimando! He had no help what so ever. He did have a bunch of players in front of him asleep at the switch! Instead of shifting up a gear with the lead RSL sits back and starts watching the game when they had Houston by the neck. Without Rimando we never would have seen an hour of first place.
Georg I agree. We are in trouble without Olave. The entire defense was decimated tonight though. Olave, Beltran, Dema, Sturgis… Where was Joy? Could’ve used some fresh defensive legs. I’ve said my fill about Cutler. He might be Ok at SL Indoor, but he is SO out of his league. Pull the plug on the red-headed stranger Jason. Put him to work at your house. He can probably make more money.
I hate to say it, but Clint, that was really bad. You look like a beer keg in a uniform.
Overall my hat is off to the guys. We were WAY outmanned against a class team, coming off a long break, playing in hot humid conditions. They worked hard. I thought Findlay was excellent, 2 great knock-on assists with his head. Beautiful goals by Deuchar and Yura, who I also thought played better than usual.
Looking forward to being back at full strength against the Crew.
1. lumpy’s was great and hopefully we can make it the regular rsl viewing party place.
2. i hope david horst enjoys the usl.
3. i’d still rather root for a losing rsl side than live in denver and root for the colorado tepids.
I thought it was a very good effort offensively. if we are able to score like that on a very good Huston Team on the road. when we get our starting back line back we should be pretty well off for the rest of the road game if we keep playing that good offensively.
other than that nice game at a humid Huston.
Get rid of Rimando, are you kidding? Name one of those shots that anyone could have stopped, sorry none of this was on Nick.
Cutler was horrible in the first half, Horst has size but lacks speed and experience, Beckerman was pointless for almost the whole match (long range balls to nobody in the final 5 minutes- give me a break). Williams was OK, Javi blew two easy goals tonight. Wingert pushed up way too far considering we had two new players on the back line and we got burnt by it. Yura and Robbie were monsters in the first half, actually Findley was a monster all night long.
It is proof that Olave, Joy, and Dema are all critical parts to this teams play. We simply got out played in the midfield and that created chances for Houston, by the time we pulled Cutler it was too late.
It was nice to see Espindola and Deuchar try to bring some energy. I was a bit disappointed by Clint’s play, he seemed to be waiting on something. I think he was confused by Javi playing all over and not staying in position. That is something that Jason will have to work on in practice, too many people playing out of position.
RSL looked to lose a couple gears when Houston went ahead 3-2 and it got worse for most when it was 4-2.
Amen georg! This game should show us above all else that Olave is the key to our recent success. Hopefully the FO, Kreis, Lagerway and Checketts can all see what an asset he is.
This game should also show that we squandered our transfer window. We left spots unfilled, kept players who are clearly not ready (Cutler and Horst), and brought in Mathis, who was at best unimpressive.
Also, Im going to respectfully disagree here. Rimando played an excellent game. I could get into this more, but it was obviously a defensive breakdown which led to Houston’s success. To blame Rimando I think is a shallow excuse. Seitz is good, but he is not our savior. this game should be laid on the defense…well and Kreis & Co. for wasting the transfer window. Oh and what was with the slow play!!?
On another note, kudos to Movsisyan, Morales, and Deucher for the goals
It is very hard to win in Houston. We did really well to score 3 good goals. We should have had 2 more. I think we should have won this game with Olave in the back. I did think Horst did well for his first start. I don’t think we can blame this loss on Horst one bit though. The first Houston goal I am pretty sure he was offsides. And Jaqua’s goal happened because Borcher’s didn’t follow him. (I do think that Borchers had an incredibly good game though.)
Yura had a great game. He was dangerous, scored an early goal, and worked hard on D.
Findley did extremely well tonight.
Duechar’s goal was incredible. Findley’s pass to him was equally as good.
I think I would have liked to see Williams stay in over Mathis. I think Andy is playing really well and holding onto the ball incredibly well, and Mathis’ touch was not that great tonight.
I also like to see Espindola more as a forward than an outside midfielder.
Cutler did fine tonight. He played well on D and did not give the ball away ofensively.
Go RSL.
First off I have to say to Travis that getting rid of Rimando would only hurt RSL. Bad idea. Second, we really need to get someone who can play for Dema when he can’t. Cutler just doesn’t cut it, he doesn’t do anything stupid, but he gets burned way too easy. Anyone who tried just dribbled right past him tonight. Tonightseemed to be a fluke with how many players we had missing. We really could have used Dema, Joy, and Beltran. I think if we would have had any of those guys we could have pulled this off.
I was very happy to see Espindola back on the field, and I would have liked to have seen him have more action, but he is coming back from injury, so hopefully he’ll be able to get some more time in in the future. But for having to play a bit out of position I thought he did well.
Keeping Olave is a MUST for RSL. I’m sure the FO knows this. I just hope they’re willing to fork out the $$ that his team in Columbia will want/deserver for him.
All in all, I’m sad to see first place slip away, but I think we can take it back. Yura played well, and I’m not being ungrateful, but Morales should have had another couple of goals. And also, congrats to Deuchar, I’ll admit I was beginning to lose faith in Dr. Goals. Keep it up.
OK, Dema was sick, Beltran was hurt, Olave was suspended, and Mantilla is gone. But where was Ian Joy? He didnt even dress! I have no problem putting in Russell on the back line but with so many absences on our d-line you would think Coach K would put in Joy just for consistencies sake. Houston had their usually line up and I think we should be really psyched that we put in 3 goals against them. Incredibly Dr Goals scored one with his feet!
Hopefully for Columbus next week we will have healthy Espindola for a full 90, Dema will be back, and Olave will not be in Colombia.
I agree with most of F4denz’s comments. Except with the part about Javi’s play. He is suppose to kinda be all over. He was just terrible! Why is nobody ripping Robbie Russell? He and Horst were awful! Rimando was fine, his defense just didn’t do much to help him. Mathis was dang near invisible when he came in! Well whatever, they are a bunch of losers. If RSL doesn’t learn to win games on the road and on grass then they are going to drop right out of the playoff picture.
Cutler did fine?
The poor guy runs thousands of meters each game without going anywhere. He makes 150 5-meter square passes, and he wins 0 50-50 balls. If you’re going to play the diamond your D-mid needs to be fast, tough, and mean. I could live with all the square and back passes if he would do something defensively. The point is he brings Nothing to the game for RSL. He tries hard, no question. He is simply out of his depth. To be fair to Kries, if Sturgis and / or Dema are healthy, Cutler is fetching Gatorade. How much quality can we expect to have in our 3rd choice holding mid? I thought dropping KB into that spot and putting Espindola on the wing was a much better alternative, but it was about 60 mins too late, and it didn’t look like Espi is all too comfortable there. Botom line last night is that we were outmanned. Give our full squad another crack at Houston and my money is on us.
man….David Horst just cracks under presure. he does not play very well. with the threee, Olave, Beltram, and Joy out that really cost us. otherwise we would have won the game i think 2-0. they played not at their best but kudos to Morales,Deuchar, Findley, and Moi! and none of the goals was on Nick… but do to this lose he is probbly mentally thinking it was him so next week they better come back with a win. because when the goalies mental game isn’t working they TEAM struggles.
-Lets go kick some buttt next week!!!! GO ReAL
Overall I think the game was sloppy but showed we can grind it out with the best of them. Cutler did not make any mistakes but he did not do anything either, anytime the ball came close to him he did nothing with it. Horst had an ok game but you can see he is not ready for the MLS, this is the game where we wish we still had Mantilla. I am glad the squad did not give up and ground it out even after a long break. GO RSL!
Anybody know where Joy was? I would have liked to see Joy, Russell, Nat, and Wingert start on the back. Horst is too inexperienced to be thrown into a game like that in Houston. Olave would have been nice, but the team needs to have the depth to withstand these sorts of issues, since suspensions and injuries will always be an issue.
It sounds like the team did pretty good, other than the defensive let downs in the first half. Props to the team to get the lead (twice) in the match, and then for Deuchar coming in to try an rally the team.
PS- I agree with the waste of the transfer window. I was hoping we would have been able to bring in another good attacking player to really shore up the attack. Oh well.
Beckerman just isn’t cutting it for me lately. This whole season he has been stale. His touch is off and he is making terrible passes. Like I’ve said before, he needs to play wih that old fire he used to play with. He used to play a lot tougher because he had something to prove. Now that he has to prove nothing, he isn’t playing that well.
The only reason we lost this game was because of a complete defensive breakdown. Olave is the best thing that has happened to us in a long time! We need him on our team.
I was disappointed to see that we signed Mathis again. I am tired of this man… If he does nothing for us (again) I will be disappointed in Kreis’ vision for our team. He has done well so far, but I do think he blew this transfer window.
Good offensive effort though by our front line. Good job!
I think the injuries obviously killed us (was Dema injured too?) plus the long break. You could tell that we were dead with 15 minutes to go. The humidity was obviously a factor, but not playing real games for a long time before then really hurt our match fitness. This was obvious when Morales shanked his last shot attempt, which would of put us at 4-3, then obviously Deucher’s shot would of tied the game. With those factors in mind, I thought we played well.
Olave is the key to our defence! Him and Borchers complement each other very well. A defence needs to gell and that one didn’t. Horst did great for his first start and so did Russel. The only problem is that they didn’t gell together. They didn’t know where one another was going to be and that makes it hard to cover a very good Houston team.
Travis your an idiot!!!! Rimando is the most under rated keeper in the MLS. You don’t become the MVP by sucking so Travis shut your mouth and move to Houston.
Gotta be honest, thus far I’m not a Robbie Russell fan. I am not seeing the “better than findley speed” or anything close to it. He seems to get lazy watching then try and slide to make up for it. Having said that I still think I would have rather seen him in at CB and joy on the left, wingert on the right.
Also, what rotten timing on losing Mantilla. Let’s face it, he was no Olave but he was no Horst either. We could have utilized him one more game.
CNNSI is reporting that many teams are interested in signing Canadian U 23 striker Will Johnson. I hope RSL is on the list. Chicago picks next in the allocation (How?) I dont know if RSL is near the top of the list. Does anyone know? We may have used our most recent selection on Russell. Anyway, I dont know if many teams could fit him on their roster because he would technically be an international and I think Chicago has all their spots filled.
One thing RSL doesnt has and needs is a young hot striker….Sorry Yura.
1st Dynamo goal is way offsides. See mlsnet.com for video highlights. I just can’t believe they allowed this goal to stand.
So, it should have been 3-3.
re: Bill way offsides? no. if it is offsides (and the mlsnet highlight bit is inconclusive) it is so so close. this is RSLs mistake. you dont wait for the call on something that close. the defense here was out of position and lazy.
usually i have terrible things to say about the officiating, however i think this was one of the best ref’ed games in RSL’s season.
Jucie Box Guy & Heffe, I am pretty sure that Ian was injured or sick. I looked but couldnt find a reason for him to not be there. but I remember reading that earlier in the week so I wasnt expecting him.
also, the more i think about this game the more angry i get. our defense sucked! horribly! i dont think its any one player’s fault but i sure hope we work on that. it will be good to have Olave back. Hopefully dema and beltran are well enough to play and joy gets fit too because this was NOT a team i ever want to see Kreis field again.
well another road lost that could have easily been a point or possibly 3. Not having Olave, Dema, and Joy/Beltran really screwed up our defense that was so highly spoken of before this game. Our attacking looked pretty good, Findley played quite well, Yura was in an odd mood and played well, Duechar played well, and Espy looked good coming on. How strange is it that instead of our forwards being the goats they actually were what kept us alive.
The firt Dynamo goal was a joke, even if the guy who recieves the ball is not off, all the other players (that were off) made a play on the ball and affected the play. I still question Rimando’s choice of staying on his feet though, i was waiting for him to just go swipe the ball, instead he stabbed at it with a foot and showed how much of a midfielder he isn’t. I also am quite pissed that only Wingert recovered on that, it seemed like a couple seconds passed while Rimando held the guy up, but everyone just stared at him. That is horrible defending. I question how onsides the second goal was, not the shot but the first ball. I couldnt get a good angle anywhere, but all of them looked like the guy on the wing broke in way earlier then anyone else. The third was a beauty and most likely goal of the week. Ball bent away from Rimando. Yes maybe, and serious emphasis on maybe here, he could have got to that ball if he was a little taller, but it was hit so well it was destined for goal. The fourth goal is all Borchers fault, he did not track Jaqua through the middle and gave him a wide open look at goal from 6 out. He isn’t going to miss that.
Starting XI for Columbus better be:
Rimando
Joy, Olave, Borchers, Wingert
Williams, Dema, Javi, Beckerman
Yura, Findley
You cant say that Yura and Findley dont deserve the starts, but you cant really say that Espy and Dr dont deserve time. I see them both coming in around 50-60 mins and hopefully Beltran is healthy and can come in for Williams or Beckerman instead of Mathis. Mathis should not even be in the 18
Just a few words:
Knowing that Olave was not going to be able to play, why let go of Mantilla? Why not asking him to stay until after this game?
You had a solid defense line before and now you see the results.
Nothing personal against Mathis, but I think the only reason he is in the team is because of his friendship with Kreis. If this does not work out in the near future, Kreis better be ready to face the consequences whatever they may be. I hope it works out for the best of the team.
AJ - 1st goal was offsides, all three of them were off. Go watch the replay again. If the receiver wasn’t off, the other 2 were and drew Rimando out, thereby gaining advantage… should have been blown dead.
2nd goal also looked offsides, the receiver is on the sideline in an offsides position when the ball is struck. The play goes on and then there is a score.
Poor officiating.
“Travis” Nick Rimando is the best goalie in North America period. Do not make me waste another word about that!
Did anyone see and hear Craig Waibel trying to start a fight with Javi? What a white trash gutter mouth bum! He fits in perfectly in Texas.
From what I saw of Matias Mantilla he was pretty sound and on a short list of RSL weak links he would not rank. Mathis 32 year old legs? Imagination is getting the better of Kreis.
Alien, youre right the other two were in an offsides position and were involved in active play. so bill youre right the goal should not have been allowed, 3-3. (However, I still believe that Mullan was onside, or too close to call.)
This does not change the fact that our defense reacted wrong here and throughout most of the game. So despite officiating (good or bad) we still have ourselves to blame for the loss.
In fact, i think this loss is more a kreis and lagerway loss. we have an illusion of depth around the field, but its clear that we cant absorb multiple injuries or suspensions. kreis and lagerway seem to be excellent scouts, so why did they miss this one? i know its midseason, but we should be watching for players all year and jump when we can. we are under the cap with roster spots, cmon!
granted i dont know what was tried and failed, but apparently not enough was in the works
AJ
I agree that our team definitely could use some more depth, but if you look at what our team was in its previous seasons, Kreis has done an amazing job. We didn’t have much talent in our starting 11, let alone in the bench. At least he has vastly improved the starting 11. We do have some good subs as well, but we do need more. The team has made a complete turn around in a very short time, and I trust that Kreis and the FO will get the depth we need.
Kicker
Its true, Kreis and Lagerway have done an amazing job turning around this struggling team. We have a starting team to be reckoned with. One that with a consistant finisher would be the best in the league. And yes, that is thanks to our coach, GM and the FO.
Maybe i’m too cynical or just too critical, but from the looks of this last game (granted it was only one game) we made some poor decisions during the transfer window. I like Russell, i think he will prove to be a outstanding defender. But Mathis!? This may be Kreis’ worst move yet. (But I will eat my words if im wrong.)
Im the first one to heap praise on our guys when they deserve it. And just because I am critical of our depth, doesnt mean I dont recognize the great changes in the past year. The way I see it is that the difference between a mediocre, mid-table team and a top-of-the-table team is depth.
Travis is off-base, but not too far. Rimando is a great, great goalie- however he is getting older and RSL is trying to get younger. We also have a tremendous talent in Olympian Seitz, let him play and get experience. We should have traded Rimando for a young, attacking player while he has such great value. I don’t think we’d see much dropoff with Seitz in the nets. He would defiitely get all those high balls Nick is too short to get ( Beckhams 2 goals as example).
Spoke with Garth at Team Day and he said they couldn’t afford another top player ” don’t want to bankrupt the team”. Maybe they are a little cash poor from the stadium? Regardless, attendance (ticket sales) are way down, so lack of revenue. They should try to sign a Mexican National to draw more latinos to the game, gotta put a$$es in the seats! Biz 101 fellas, I don’t need a degree from Duke for that.
Speaking of which, Coach K said he didn’t notice the obvious lack of attendance this season- where has he been?
OOOOOOO00000000000oooooooooooooooooooo………..
That Houston 4 - Chivas - 0 scoreline really makes the houston-RSL 4-3 game look like two teams that are really close. RSL scoring 3 while Chivas scoring 0 is something. Not sure what. But it seems like something.
Skinny if we are trying go younger we are going in the wrong direction. 27 year old Mantilla released, an almost 32 Mathis signed. Statistically and at the end of the day Rimando is head and shoulders above Seitz. The Mexican National idea is excellent!
Best.