The one where we are off beat, but not beaten.

1: Not a good stretch for Alan Franco. Is his overall play horrible? No. Not really. But his mistakes are costing us goals and potentially points. Defending is a hard life. As a forward, you’ll make mistakes, but they’re not likely to cost your team the game. When a defender makes mistakes, it can be everythibg. Alan is making too many. And his mistakes are for the most part a result of not being switched on, and not a lack of technical ability or a miss-hit ball. 

 

2: Felt like two different matches after the restart. Prior to the delay we were closing down space, preventing service into the box and forcing turnovers. After the restart we were not sharp and Nashville exploited that. We really have not figured out how to defend against two strikers up top. Nashville has been a very difficult opponent for us. Feels more and more like a proper rivalry. It gets spicer each encounter. 

 

3: Once again, neither goal is really on Shuttleworth. Those calling for Roco to come in will be calling for his ousting the minute our back line makes mistakes that set him up to fail and he’s scored on. Truth be told, Joe Willis was the far sloppier keeper. It was infact, his mistake that lead to our 1st goal. Nothing Bobby did resulted in a goal for Nashville. I’m sure there’s a lot of cross over in the “Guz out” “Shuttleworth out” Venn diagram. 

 

4: We are badly missing Miles and George Campbell. The communication clearly isn’t happening on the back line and now when the mistakes are happening, Miles isn’t there to clean things up. With George getting healthier hopefully we will see him starting again soon. 

 

5: I think I was a little harsh in saying that the mentality of the team was fragile after last week’s match. Yeah I’d love to jump out to an early lead and then hold it, but this is now multiple games where we have come back from a trailing position to get a result. That’s not nothing. And this was a weird game. With the lightning delay, the inconstient officiating and then especially the whistle blow at the end when a clear 2v1 opportunity was developing, a road result here is a good result. We are still right in the mix despite being a far cry from our best. We are infact, scoring a good amount of goals. That actually speaks to the determination and no quit attitude of the team inspite of all of the circumstances and bad damn luck.