Showing posts with label Lewis Morgan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lewis Morgan. Show all posts

Saturday, July 9, 2022

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Red Bull New York: When Constellations Are Just Random, Useless Dots

Having the technology doesn't make using it right...
This won’t take long. I’m trying to get two of these things in tonight...

If I had to choose one way to explain FC Cincinnati’s 1-1 home draw to Red Bull New York, I’d go with the passing accuracy and total passes numbers, plus a pair of passing maps that look like constellations. The Red Bulls do best when they can force the opposition to play their game – particularly the part about forever pushing the ball forward, and with all the frustrated constipation of trying to make a turducken out of a set of badly-matched birds. Cincinnati had all of....I’m calling it about 25 minutes’ worth of impetus in that game in total; the rest of it was just 10 mammals reacting to stimuli. Solid game by Roman Celentano, by the way....

To lay my cards on the table, I’m a little pissy about this draw and mostly because I’m fairly convinced it didn’t have to be this way.

J. R. R. Tolkein getting the penalty call in the 28th-minute didn’t hurt, obviously, and, I don’t care how lonely this hill is, I would never have called that as a penalty. Raymon Gaddis clearly played the ball, one that hung in the air like a slow-pitched softball and, if he kicked J. R. R. in mid-flight, I mean, haven’t we all wanted to do that, if only for the terrible dialogue and dwarf songs alone?

Call that a long, digressive way of saying, I wouldn’t have called that penalty, but that doesn’t erase the fact it 1) wasn’t crazy and 2) was called, and that’s how the Red Bulls turned a whole lot of mostly nothing into one more point on the road. Celentano made all of two saves tonight (and came close on the PK), one of them that asked no more of him than catching a placement shot at head level from range, and that gives a good measure of New Jersey’s “dominance” tonight, and the limits of their present approach to the game. They succeeded in stifling everything Cincy thought to do, as soon as they tried it – boiling over Luciano Acosta’s frustration in the process – but the return they got was almost entirely negative. RBNY only managed one good shot on goal that stuck with me (Morgan, from range, circa the 63rd), but the rest topped out at their trademark frenetic aimlessness. They’re the soccer equivalent of someone who can win the fight for the knife in a street fight, but don’t know what to do with it from there.

Now, to pick up the mail from the complaints department...

Thursday, July 7, 2022

FC Cincinnati v Red Bull New York Preview: Keeping the Bulls at Bay

Their logo compels them.
It’s been respectable for FC Cincinnati lately, good even, and they’ve battled multiple Eastern giants to one point per. It looks another week of the same thing on the menu, but, fuck it, it’s 2022, so let ‘er rip and dream big. First, some relevant facts:

Red Bull New York
Record/Basics: 9-5-5, 32 points, 3-2-4 home; 6-3-1 away; 29 gf, 20 ga, +9 goal differential
Last 10: TTTLWLWLWW (1-3-1 on the road, including all three road losses of 2022; hmmm...)
Oppo: v POR, @ PHI, v CHI, @ MIA, v DC, @ CLT, v TOR, @ LAFC, v ATL, @ SKC

What We Know About Them
Taking inspiration from the corporate logo on their shirts, the Red Bulls chase every pass, ball and player like blood-doped demons. Oh, and their forwards – mostly Patrick Klimala and Tom Barlow – have been crap this season (just 7 goals and 3 assists between them). Still, they’re difficult to play against and just as hard to beat and their road form, though worse lately (see above, maybe celebrate a little), ranks near the top of the league.

When it comes to goals for/allowed, they’re on the right side of average (24.7) in both categories; going the other way, they scored nearly half their goals in just four games - 4-1 @ TOR, 3-0 @ ORL, 3-3 v CHI, 4-1 v DCU. Game-to-game, then, they don’t score a lot (that’s good!), but, with that defense(/defensive scheme), they don’t need to (awww); then again, they’d given up two goals in every road game prior to their last, a 1-0 road-win over a serially hapless Sporting Kansas City team. About that...

Notes on Recent Form
Big picture, they’ve won four of their last six – a pretty compelling feat regardless of team/venue/form. It’s that specific context that makes their offensive production borderline embarrassing: they posted shitter-level xG in three of their past five games (0.7 or less), and topped out at 1.4 at home against Toronto. That said, that 0.7 xG fails to capture the way they seemed to flick a switch at the start of the 2nd half at SKC and find great looks (four for sure, maybe five) until Aaron Long nodded home off a corner. They went down a man for the final 20+ minutes of that game (due to stoppage time) and, a couple chances aside (one of them cleared off the line), they made SKC piss ‘em them all way with a combination of rabid-hyper-puppy harrassment and shithousery (Klimala, in particular, who found his special purpose).