Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Things are Surprisingly Looking Up

So it was another week and another come from behind win for the Chicago Fire This week their victims were the Philadelphia Union, who took the lead in the 34th minute when a cross from the right side caused some cunfusion between Anibaba and Johnson. The ball eventually found the back of the net coming off of Anibaba. The Fire had a great response by tieing the goal through great work by Macdonald out on the wing to beat Soumare to the end line which he produced a cross that eventually found the feet of Rolfe who slotted it home. Then right before half, the Fire found the go ahead goal off a corner that met the head of Friedrich and found the back of the net. Did I call for him to score in the game against TFC, sorry I meant the he was going to score against Philly. In the second half the Rolfe finished the scoring by releasing a rocket from just inside the top right corner of the 18 that found Macmath's fingers but was too hot for him to stop. Overall the team responded great to going down and eventually put the game away by controlling most of the possession and limiting the Union to only 2 shots on goal.

So after 2 games of seeing our new DP's I have this to say. I thought that the Fernandez pick up was good to begin with and he has proven his worth through his work rate and ability to provide something that I believe had been missing. That something is the ability to create space and move the ball through quick one-twos with the other mids and forwards. His first touch is something that we had been missing since Grazzini left for "personal matters".  As for Macdonald, I may be wrong about this signing because he has shown good ability to hold up the ball, make some good passes to the other attackng players, and also the ability to create space by using good footwork and his size. This is what Oduro has missing from his game. I think Oduro is one of those forwards that is still very useful to the team but the formation and style that Frank employs is not very suitable to his strengths. Yes I know he had a good year under Klopas last season but at the same the league has figured out how to play him. In this very physical league I think that a forward with size and strength has more of a chance to prosper.

One problem we did have was that Pause had to be subbed before halftime after colliding with Soumare 20 minutes earlier and it was found he broke a couple ribs and had a collapsed lung. You can read about it here. This is a chance for some of the other players to step up that haven't seen the field as much this year due to the consistent play of Pardo and Pause. So I'm looking at you Paladini to step up and sot right in and bring some energy to the lineup.

This week we have the Revolution coming to town for a Saturday night affair. NE looked to be on the up and up but after not winning a game since July 8th and only collecting 1 point in that time frame they are looking to be throwing up the white flag for this season. The main sign of that was by trading Sharlie Joseph to Chivas USA. Joseph was the unquestioned leader of the team and I don't think that the New England mids will be able to compete with ours. Still they do have a couple of strong forwards in Sene and Bengston but I think our back line should be able to deal with them. Our mids will have to shut down the attacking mids of the Revs though. They will have to target Feilhaber and Nguyen to shut down because all of the attacking goes through those 2 players. I still think that we will come out winners by a scoreline of 3-0 with goals from Rolfe, Macdonald, and i think Berry will get his noggin on another one this week.

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