 |
| Till that gate drops, these are my takes. |
I had this theory that Major League Soccer’s Week 9 churned out a bunch of surprises - most them 1-2 reversals for the home team. On checking back to the preview thread I posted…shit, Saturday morning(? things continue to run together post-COVID; turns out it was middle-age all along), things played out close enough to as expected.
In the interest of time, yours and mine, I decided to tighten the format this weekend. I’ll be keeping the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell formula to organize the teams (aka, The Divine Comedy Rankings), only Purgatory will just be Purgatory - i.e., the place in between - with no distinction between the teams rising and falling. The results helped with that, for what it’s worth.
Speaking of which, I’ve moved (most of) the commentary on the individual teams in the notes on each result and to dropped the Divine Comedy Rankings at the end. In other words, what I write about the results should speak to the placement of each team. All the results from MLS Week 9 below are bolded, but I put the ones I gave a longer look in italics, as always, I linked to The Mothership’s game summary home page in each final score. Oh, and the asterisk on the signals a result I didn’t expect. I didn’t have time to dig into any as I’d like [Ed. - I’m moving to a Thursday bowling league in three weeks, so that should help], but…I mean, I expected the result, so what was there to see?
Fine. I did some poking around. Off to it…
Houston Dynamo FC 1-2 Austin FC
This one I would have watched, but the rat bastards at ESPN have this thing about not broadcasting Austin games. It started with a terrible fuck-up/exquisite goal, but played out the way all Dynamo FC games, if only in my mind - i.e., they score force and then watch the opposition slowly draw back either one or three points. That stats point to the opposite of a free-for-all, so file that away. Ausitn is doing well, obviously, though I’ll call that goals-for stat a lie until they tie me to a chair and put an apparatus that lets mice to nibble at my face over my head. Also, this (this is from Matt Doyle’s Week 9 review, as some other things will be):
“Their highs were really high and their lows were really low. What it came down to was that against some of the poorer, less defensively disciplined teams in the league, that ability to use the ball sometimes made the Verde look like an irresistible force. Make bad teams chase, open up new gaps in the process, then hit those gaps. Rinse, repeat, win. Austin showed a good chunk of that last year.”
Also:
“But now the other shoe is about to drop, and that theory is going to get stress tested against the other half of the table. Seven of Austin’s next 10 games are on the road, and eight of those 10 are against teams that I’m pretty sure are either very good, or very talented, or both.”
My soft spot for Houston takes another blow…
In the interest of time, yours and mine, I decided to tighten the format this weekend. I’ll be keeping the Heaven, Purgatory, Hell formula to organize the teams (aka, The Divine Comedy Rankings), only Purgatory will just be Purgatory - i.e., the place in between - with no distinction between the teams rising and falling. The results helped with that, for what it’s worth.
Speaking of which, I’ve moved (most of) the commentary on the individual teams in the notes on each result and to dropped the Divine Comedy Rankings at the end. In other words, what I write about the results should speak to the placement of each team. All the results from MLS Week 9 below are bolded, but I put the ones I gave a longer look in italics, as always, I linked to The Mothership’s game summary home page in each final score. Oh, and the asterisk on the signals a result I didn’t expect. I didn’t have time to dig into any as I’d like [Ed. - I’m moving to a Thursday bowling league in three weeks, so that should help], but…I mean, I expected the result, so what was there to see?
Fine. I did some poking around. Off to it…
Houston Dynamo FC 1-2 Austin FC
This one I would have watched, but the rat bastards at ESPN have this thing about not broadcasting Austin games. It started with a terrible fuck-up/exquisite goal, but played out the way all Dynamo FC games, if only in my mind - i.e., they score force and then watch the opposition slowly draw back either one or three points. That stats point to the opposite of a free-for-all, so file that away. Ausitn is doing well, obviously, though I’ll call that goals-for stat a lie until they tie me to a chair and put an apparatus that lets mice to nibble at my face over my head. Also, this (this is from Matt Doyle’s Week 9 review, as some other things will be):
“Their highs were really high and their lows were really low. What it came down to was that against some of the poorer, less defensively disciplined teams in the league, that ability to use the ball sometimes made the Verde look like an irresistible force. Make bad teams chase, open up new gaps in the process, then hit those gaps. Rinse, repeat, win. Austin showed a good chunk of that last year.”
Also:
“But now the other shoe is about to drop, and that theory is going to get stress tested against the other half of the table. Seven of Austin’s next 10 games are on the road, and eight of those 10 are against teams that I’m pretty sure are either very good, or very talented, or both.”
My soft spot for Houston takes another blow…
