Responding to Pressure
April 19, 2008 by f4denz.
1st half RSL vs. TFC
Well to me it was a question of which team would respond to the pressure, the pressure of expectations was there for both teams and looking at the first half it is TFC playing their home opener who are responding. Play from their new imports appears to be the major factor as both Robert and Ricketts has been impressive and, a good effort by Guevara have really been the difference. Robert scored on a free kick from just outside of the box in the 31st minute to give Toronto the 1-0 lead, RSL should count itself lucky to not be down by at least 2 goals.
RSL has had horrible passing, awful first touches and simply appear to be a step slower than TFC in the first half. An injury to Sturgis forced a 1st half change to replace him with Talley, will limit Jason options in the 2nd half. Controlling the ball and not panicking will be essential if RSL is going to get back into this match. I expect that Findley will go out early in the 2nd half, with Fabian nursing an injury, I would bring in Yura to improve our attacking effort, and then if RSL is still behind look for Talley to come out about minute 70 for a more attacking threat in Andy Williams. I actually had hoped that Tino Nunez would have made the 18 this week after a very impressive effort in the reserve match against BYU this week.
Time to pull up the socks and get into the second half
A tale of two halves
Well if you took the first half and changed it 180 degrees and then subtracted the goal, well you have the second half of this match. RSL was the team on the attack, but the scoring touch that seemed so natural last week against DC United was missing today, and despite a number of chances (far more than the official 8 shots), RSL could not find the back of the net. The result is that they did not respond to the pressure of expectations and dropped a match against a team that they could have beaten, TFC played a great match and leveraged their new talent (great job by their staff finding both Robert and Ricketts- they appear to be the real deal) and they get the 3 points in their home opener. RSL it is back to the drawing board, they have to face a DC United team next weekend that will be looking for revenge, let’s hope that Jason can get a 90 minute effort from his team next week, because that was not the case today.
OFF MY SOAPBOX