KC-HOU Pregame. Hoping to give Houston a problem
By: Herschel | July 2nd, 2009On this 4th of July weekend Houston comes into KC hoping to improve on their goalless effort from last weekend against one of the worst defenses in the league (LA’s), while KC, tries to make it 2 wins in a row in the league after a horrible Superliga performance.
KC will be missing defensive leader and captain Jimmy Conrad, as well as midfielders Davy Arnaud and Roger Espinoza due to Gold Cup call ups, while Kevin Souter will not be available due to injury. The Dynamo also has its share of vacancies in the starting lineup, missing Brian Ching, Stuart Holden and Andrew Hainault because of the Gold Cup, while Wade Barret, Eddie Robinson, and Craig Waibel are out injured; Ricardo Clark missed his US Cup game due to personal reasons and I am unsure of his availability.
It will be a scrappy battle for tired teams who just got off playing US Cup games and, who after Saturday’s match will again continue to play for the Cup midweek. I do wonder how much offense will be generated from teams that regardless of their mid week results have struggled to score recently and are missing key offensive players such as Ching and Arnaud.
I really can’t predict what the KC lineup might look like with the defense having been exposed against Santos last Sunday and with a midfield that could not contain the fast passing Mexican team. Some posters and bloggers have suggested moving Matt Besler to his more natural center back position instead of struggling Rauwshan McKenzie and slotting Michael Harrington to his natural left back position instead of continuing to place him in the right side of the midfield where he has produced some terrible performances. Also the attacking midfield could see either Kurt Morsink or Graham Zusi there if Harrington does move back to defense. The Morsink/Hirsig midfield does have the interesting option of having them rotate the d-mid position so that Hirsig can move forward and do some more vertical passing like he did in his first game vs. Toronto where he got an assist.
Coach Onalfo might consider Houston’s weakened attack and leave Hohlbein with McKenzie in the middle hoping that they can control the dangerous and speedy Kamara but if Vuoso from Santos gave us fits a faster Kamara could spell trouble. I expect this to be a low scoring affair with either a tie or KC winning by one.
I’m going to throw out 2 possible lineups today:
Hartman
Watson—Hohlbein—McKenzie—Besler
Jewsbury—Hirsig—Morsink/Zusi—Gomez
Wolff—Lopez
OR
Hartman
Watson—Hohlbein—Besler—Harrington
Jewsbury—Hirsig—Morsink/Zusi—Gomez
Wolff—Lopez
KC-2 (Lopez, Wolff)
HOU- 1 (Kamara)
On a side note: Not much going on this holiday weekend and looking to watch a classic movie? Here’s the trailer to one of my favorites; the one and only original Die Hard. If you haven’t seen it (where have you been?) you have to watch it; if you have, watch it again, you can’t get tired of watching John McClaine kill terrorists.
Have a great 4th of July weekend and always keep our guys in gals in the military serving throughout the world in your prayers this Independence Day and every day.
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Category: Aaron Hohlbein, Davy Arnaud, Houston Dynamo, Jimmy Conrad, Kurt Morsink, Pre-/Post-Game Reports, Santiago Hirsig, Team News
Tags: Aaron Hohlbein, Davy Arnaud, Houston Dynamo, Jimmy Conrad, Kurt Morsink, Pre-/Post-Game Reports, Santiago Hirsig, Team NewsSubscribe
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Morsink isn’t an attacking midfielder, he’s a straight d-mid. Onalfo learned that lesson the hard way when he tried playing Morsink there his rookie year.
If McKenzie starts, I’d expect Jack to be back in the middle and Harrington starting on the right.
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Actually the rotating of positions would be something
different and might give teams something to thing about instead of the mediocre play that the team has had recently and we could see Hirsig and Morsink move up or down as needed.That being said and without ripping into Onalfo yet
I’ll wait for my post game report since I’m trying to not use crude language to describe yesterday’s ridicule of a game) having a few midfielders that can pass the ball around a bit and maybe help Hirsig would change up the attack that yesterday consisted 9 out of 10 times of long balls from McKenzie, Besler, Hohlbein or Watson up to the forwards, bypassing the midfield.Not the smartest way to play considering that the Houston central defenders tower over our attackers by at least 3 to 4 inches.
I actually congratulated a Houston fan yesterday. I envy a team that needs few non-US/CAN players, no DP and even after losing their best player in DeRosario still are steady at top the league. They have won 2 or the last 3 MLS Cups with little pomp or circumstance and miss their best forward 1/3 of the time due to USNT Duty (as well as DeRo).
I know what I want in my Xmas stocking. Dominic Kinnear.
A loss on Tuesday and On Goal should start looking elsewhere for someone to lead the team (Coach and TD) for the stadium opening.
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Please, we both know CO isn’t going anywhere. Hell, Red Bull is 10 times worse than KC, is in a much bigger market and have owners that usually only look at the play on the field and they still have Osorio. Onalfo isn’t going anywhere. No change is happening.
I completely don’t understand your interest in Morsink. He’s never shown anything other than being a foul mouthed card machine. He showed flashes for like 3 weeks last season and that was it. Other than that he’s shown very little on either side of the ball.
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Also about the game. The Wizards had plenty of chances that didn’t come from long balls over the top. 9 out of 10 is a gross over estimation. Through balls by defenders on the ground led to many great opportunities, including our best of the game, when Watson played Jack through down the wing and Josh couldn’t get his header into the net. There’s a difference between long hopeful balls in the air and many of the balls our defenders were playing last night, most of which were weighted balls into space for an attacker (usually the ball was played on the ground). Watch the hightlights if you don’t believe me (and with 6 minutes there are plenty of chances by the Wizards in there).
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Dan:
No special love for anybody, but although you might not want to admit it he did have a few very good games last year near the middle and hope does spring eternal for repeats; but then again KC fans have a puppy love relationship with Keving Souter with the exception of a lucky goal he’s shown even less and Onalfo gave us a steady dose of him at the end of last year. Shoot, I’d take Zusi in some sort of creative role in midfield to help Hirsig, but right now he’s all alone.
Many chances on Saturday yes; real chances few. We out shot Houston 2 to 1 but with shots on goal they had a 3 to 1 advantage on us. Plus 1 of our 3 SOG was a dribbler from Lopez that Onstad could have stopped with his foot.
Regarding Onalfo it is sad that On Goal would not look elsewhere since he is swooning in mediocrity; just because Osorio is still in NY doesn’t mean we should compare our team to them. We’ll see how we do tomorrow but truth be told and history being as it is we might not go to far against a Seattle team that had the weekend off.
BTW, why would wishing to have Kinnear in KC be that bad, cut some overinflated salaries and the money would be there. Like I said, it would seem he doesn’t need the Argie connection to get a team going.Posted from
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Never said Kinnear would be a bad thing. But there is no way you’re getting him out of Houston. Maybe I’m being too realistic, but we’re stuck with Onalfo through the rest of this year at least (probably longer cause he’s “led” us to the playoffs the past two years). Maybe I’m wrong and OnGoal will do things differently, but KC kept Gansler about 2 years too long I have a feeling we’ll do the same with Onalfo. I have nothing for respect for Kinnear, he’s a great coach, gets more out of the scraps he picks up in MLS (Jaqua, Ngwenya, Oduro, etc) than any other coach in the league. I just think it’s completely unlikely we’d get him.
The problem I continue to see with the Wizards is that we have too many just above average players that can play attacking roles (Gomez, Arnaud, Jewsbury, Wolff, Lopez). Those players are good enough that any day they can turn it on and have a good performance, course when none are on (as has been the case for a while), we struggle. I just don’t really see Onalfo sitting any of those players in league games until Espinoza comes back, then we may see Gomez sit. Either way, our offense just isn’t that good.
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You are right on Dan. I think what Kinnear can do that Onalfo is millions of miles away from doing, which is getting the best out of players. Like you say, he gets scraps and makes them players that will work for his team. I see KC having better individual players that just can’t seem to gel. Reading Mike Kuhn’s post on Big Soccer, we are doing worse than last year at midseason and we had that long horrible road trip then, and last year we missed our #10 most of that time, and had not Gomez, Thompson or Wolff, while this year’s #10 has played almost every game with the above mentioned players being available. Nothing on Hirsig but we really haven’t been (with the exception of the Houston game with the USNT callups)short personnel.
Also, on Saturday, when Harrington came out he was so pissed that he was ranting for a good 5 minutes behind the bench, not wanting to go near Onalfo for taking him out. I am starting to see that not only are we dealing with mediocre attacking players, but I also feel the chemistry that was there year 1 has seriously faded. But like you say, in the MLS it seems to take alot to get people fired (unless you are a player).
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