Hello, Salt Lake Valley — and everyone everywhere else (Utah Valley, southern Utah, Idaho — I'm looking squarely at you)! I hope you've not burned alive with this unseasonably (or is it seasonably? I don't know anymore.) warm weather, though I do hope you had a chance to go out and enjoy this before it snows hundreds of feet again and we're trapped in the cold.
There is not particularly a lot of news emanating from, well, anywhere in the Real Salt Lake camp. We're still waiting to see if we'll get a small bit of justice served in our name on Steven Lenhart. While I'm not at all certain anything will happen in that regard, to be honest, it would affect us only very, very minimally, and while I'm certainly a proponent of some sort of consistent justice in these matters, I can't say I want to spend my time worrying about this one.
Surely we have the necessary depth to make do without one of our top two strikers and one of our top two central defenders, though. As unfortunate and unjust as the latter might be, we shan't have many complaints about the former, and for both, a rest was perhaps already in order.
Enter Chris Schuler and Paulo Junior. (On a related note, I do love that Junior is nearly Paulo's de facto last name, though it is, of course, Araujo.) The former showed some excellent early season form in the absence of defensive stalwart Nat Borchers, and the latter has been finding his feet again after unfortunate injury layoffs.
The two will be part of what I'd imagine will be a shifted lineup — one of those three games in eight days situations again, you see — and they'll be looking to grab their first-ever win in Texas. Perhaps we shall dub this "The Curse of the Lone Star State" or some such, because it seems a bit odd. Maybe it's the weather.
On another somewhat-related note, an interesting stat popped up from the wunderkinds at @OptaJack that was fascinating and — perhaps — invigorating. Fabian Espindola (you know, the guy that was sent off against San Jose. No, the first one.), since 2011, has beat more players off the dribble than any other MLS player. You know what this means, right? That's right. Next time you hear a fan griping that Espindola only tries the same thing over and over, or he doesn't take enough shots, or that he's not scoring enough, point this out to him.
It's quite a remarkable stat: 42 times he has beat players with dribbles since 2011. It's more than once a match, and that, all told, is remarkable. If you'd like to compare him with somebody who beats players on dribbles more often, you are perhaps doing something wrong. Sure, he's no Messi (the oft-vaunted comparison player of the decade, I think) and he's no Ronaldo and he's no what-have-you. He is, instead, Fabian Espindola, and this is the player he is. He beats players on the dribble, he darts through offside traps, he fires in crosses, and he scores on counter attacks.
Moreover, Espindola is level with Robbie Findley for our all-time leading goal scorer, and that's quite an achievement for a player whose future with the club has been in question more than once or twice. We're lucky to have a player of his caliber, and I hope he continues scoring for the club for many, many years.
Right, 'til tomorrow, when I'll have a full match preview — or, you know, reasonably full, something like that — with some cool stats I've been compiling over the past few days. (On that note, does anyone really think data entry is fun? I don't particularly.)
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