The Knee Jerk: RSL vs LAFC

Another match at home. No clean sheet. No points. More bad piece movements.

RSL Out-coached Again

RSL played a rather nice possession game up until the point that Bob Bradley made the strategic moves that dismantled us. It’s another incident of in-game out-coaching by our opponents.

When we did make substitutions, they brought nothing to the game for RSL. I wonder if we wouldn’t have looked better with Besler and Chang remaining on the pitch. Meram and Wood certainly didn’t help our situation.

Ninja Defending

LAFC had some great ninja defending, their young keeper showing some great reactions and Segura dropping a defender’s save of awesomeness.

RSL had chances. Those chances came to naught.

Safe Predictions

We’re at that point where I think it’s safe to predict that RSL isn’t going to be a Supporters’ Shield or MLS Cup contender this year. Most likely we’ll end up in a clogged middle-to-bottom-middle Western Conference table and spending the last matches of the season fighting for a playoff spot, probably even needing to depend on other teams dropping results for things to really roll in favor of our mid-table adequacy.

That’s what we are. An adequate team. We’re not great and we’re not good. We’re also not terrible. There are some things that we do well and there are times that we look very good. We’re just adequate. A filler team that most of MLS probably forgets about. Which is disappointing, but also something that we can improve past.

It’s going to take a strong The Team is the Star mentality for RSL to come together, and we don’t have an owner or a locked-in cohesion yet.

Overreactions

Worse than the loss tonight was that we had to watch 90 minutes of those someone-left-a-red-sock-in-the-washer LAFC jerseys. They’re hideous, but at least LAFC’s sheets got cleaned.

LAFC need to bring more stretchers with them. I feel like they really needed stretchers tonight.

I envy Bob Bradley’s scalp.