Real Salt Lake falters on the road again

Remember when your mom told you if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all? I can’t tell you how tempting that is after watching a horrible RSL effort against New York, but I am going to resist the temptation to just bury this match deep into the dark places of my mind, because there are some very valuable lessons to be learned from it. In fact I think the effort in New York speaks loudly about the season so far.

So we are 4 matches into a 30 match season, so close to the midterm of the first quarter of the season and RSL sit with a 2-2 record and in the stat’s department we are 6-6-6 (ohhh spooky), we have 6 points, with 6 goals scored and 6 goals allowed. Before the panic begins, the earliest that RSL has ever had 6 points before was week 7 (2005,2008) so unlike years past the start hasn’t been nearly as slow, but after seeing how the team played last year a bunch of questions come to mind?

Where is Javi? The first question that comes to mind for me is what happened to the creative energy and assist leader of the team? Sure teams are playing him a bit differently but 4 matches in and not a single assist, instead 7 shots with one goal and a team leading 3 yellow cards. That sure sounds like frustration to me, and part of it may be that more plays are going through Mathis, but a larger part of it may simply be that the first touch and passing in the midfield has been off by everyone.

I caught myself asking where Will Johnson has been, I know he is playing but when I re-watch the matches he is away from the ball and instead it is a defender pushing up in attack instead of Will. This is simply baffling to me since Will was one of the factors in our late season push, his ability to pull defenders out to cover him allowed others to be open in the middle, but this year he just seems lost in the shuffle. The possession and control of the midfield that allowed RSL to play such an attractive style at the end of last year seems to have withered and died on a vine somewhere in the preseason, and without that it could be a long season.

First touches have been off all season, starting in Seattle and clearly seen in New York when Kyle’s inability to control a pass directly leads to the second New York goal. The ability to connect more that 2 or 3 passes together seems to be gone, in part because after the Columbus match we want to launch balls over or through the middle to Robbie or Yura, as they try to get behind defenses. I see a lot less of the calculated forward pushes that bring our defenders up to midfield so we can match numbers as we force other teams to defend, instead we want to see Robbie, Yura, or whoever beat 3 guys to get a shot on goal. Well that won’t work very often as we have seen in recent weeks, speaking of things that haven’t worked in recent weeks, what happened to the hardnosed bulldog that wouldn’t go down no matter who was pulling, pushing, or kicking him?

Now Yura and others seem to be playing more like Carlos Ruiz or Blanco, going down at the lightest of contact and hoping to get a call, but few calls are being made and instead we simply look silly. It is time for us to go back to working hard, fighting for the ball and doing whatever it takes to get the goal. The goals have been coming but if you discount the hat trick by Findley, the RSL offense has looked a bit anemic, so getting Will, Clint, and Yura into the mix more will be important.

One thing I liked coming out of New York was a chance to get Escalada into the mix and I think the attacking energy looked much better with him in the mix, but each match this year has been marked by one factor. Lack of control in the midfield, Seattle was simply sharper, Columbus we took advantage of some huge mistakes, DC United had us in fits for most of the match, and New York simply didn’t allow us to play our style of game. If we can control the midfield and keep possession of the ball and move forward as a unit in attack we will begin to see the success that we came to expect at the end of last season.

I will do a detailed look at this weekend’s match, that should happen later tonight or early tomorrow.

OFF MY SOAPBOX

This entry was posted on April 20, 2009 at 4:59 pm and is filed under The soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.