On a night when three points were there for the taking, we’ve taken none. In a match against struggling Toronto FC, despite all their artificial improvements, we created chance after chance, but through a series of missteps and mistakes, we ended up taking none. On a night when our defense was its strongest, we let in an unfortunate if well-won goal — it may have been a fluke, but it was a fluke Toronto worked for.
We may have put in as hard a shift as we needed, but hard work doesn’t always put you in the right positions, and it doesn’t give you the killer instinct for goals that’s necessary to win the league. No, despite our 16 shots tonight, only 4 were on target, and none of those were wholly threatening. Strangely, the most threatening were undoubtedly those we placed off target, and when those are the biggest threats on offer, you’ll always have problems winning matches.
Sure, luck played into the result. On another night, sure, we’d have scored 7 and rolled to a win without so much as batting an eyelash. But does luck really make the difference here? I’d hardly think so. Luck is part of it, but when your star striker finds himself consistently in the wrong positions, something else is wrong. Fabian Espindola, for his two assaults on the crossbar, worked his hindquarters off to make chances, and he played balls into the path of Saborio — but for whatever reason, whether it’s miscommunication between Espindola and Saborio, or whether it’s a lack of sharpness from Saborio, it stands to reason that he should be putting away chances served to him on a plate, whether they come in the form of free headers or whether they come on tight shots in the box.
But it’s easy to find somebody to blame during a loss, and this one is no particularly strong exception. Still, the blame should be shouldered by the whole of the squad, who, in general, didn’t quite do enough to make a win the only option for Real Salt Lake. On a night when we had nearly 60 percent of possession, complete 77 percent of our passes to 65 percent of the opponents’, and take more shots, we should have been doing something to seal a win — fully more than we did tonight.
Yes, we played good football for the most part, but when things got tough, we started hoofing the ball around and getting nervous. It’s seemed a fundamental problem this season: When things get difficult, the squad tenses up and tries to force the issue a bit. It’s not at all necessary, and we could be doing much more than smashing the ball toward Saborio and Espindola. We have a strong midfield, even when you factor in injuries, and we can put the ball on the ground and play as well as anybody. In the air, we’ll always lose out to big defenders: Neither Sabo or Fabi is the aerial target that would capitalize on those chances, and our rate of success is undoubtedly low.
Further discouraging late on was the squad’s crowding of the box. I understand the desire to score that game-winning (or drawing) goal, but sending 8 players into the box with little to no midfield support won’t solve that problem. It’s yet another example of our nervousness when we’re behind late on, and it’s another part of that attitude must be fixed. We’ve had some setbacks this season, and this is, I think, the mental result of those. Until we sort those out, we won’t be doing much more than impressing for a weekend at a time. Can I fault our effort tonight? Hardly. We worked until the very end. But there were some very real problems that need to be addressed, and no amount of hard work can paper over that.
Perhaps my attitude will be improved tomorrow. Maybe I’ll find something in the stats that cheers me up, but I get the feeling it’ll be a bit of a dire weekend. So, until tomorrow, when I’ll try to be more positive. Up the RSL.
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