Rocked in the Rockies

As the dark voice inside me expected, the Dynamo have lost to yet another lowly team. Colorado (with its previous 4 wins) joins Chicago, Toronto, and RSL in the Deadbeats That Shutout And Beat The Dynamo Club. The RSL match was a coincidence; now the Colorado match has set a trend.

I can't blame D-Ro for the own goal. Bad luck happens. But usually misfortune isn't a game changer, unless you're not taking care of business elsewhere on the field. As we said way too often last season, and again at the beginning of this season, the Dynamo's weakness is in the final third of the field. If you can't score goals, you'll be susceptible to bad luck; and we have been susceptible these past few weeks.

We generated a lot of chances, which is a good sign. We need to do better with the finishing if we expect to return to form. Good goalkeeping can keep a team in the game, but eventually the odds will work against the miracle worker in the net if you put enough quality shots at him. That's what we need to do. Mambo Seafood donates to charity $100 for each goal scored by the Dynamo. (Mambo has been saving its money big-time these past few games.) Maybe Mambo should collect $100 from each player that sends a shot from within the 18-yard box more than, say, 1 yard above the crossbar. That might eliminate those irritating parabolic, low-orbit shots.

I know, I know: penalizing bad shots will only lead to fewer shots. And that's bad.

So, we're 0-2-1 since the All-Star break. That doesn't speak well for the team in this second half of the season.

And there is a statistic I need to investigate. Have we ever won a game -- or even scored? -- when we had a man advantage and weren't already winning? Just off the top of my head, I know that we lost to KC last season when KC was down a man, we lost to RBNY this season when the Bulls were down a man, and we lost to Colorado tonight. We couldn't score against a 10-man Toronto just before the All-Star game in a match that ended it in a scoreless draw. Can we not score a goal against a short-handed side? And if not, why? What does that say about our weaknesses?

(Versus Chivas on June 21, we faced a 10 man team when we were up 2-0 already, and were able to score 2 more goals after the ejection. So we know that we CAN score versus a 10-man team if we're up by 2 goals already. We've proven that we CAN'T score against a 10-man team if we're tied or behind.)
Thanks to an uncharacteristic comeback by FCD in its match versus the Crew tonight, we're no longer leading the Western Conference. If New England takes care of business tomorrow versus LA, then we'll be in third place in the run for the Supporters' Shield. Our own destiny is no longer in our hands, but we should still be able to take the Supporters' Shield if we return to the form we had in June. With the remaining 9 games we have 27 points available, which would give us an impressive 61 points. (DCU won it last year with 55 points.) Next week we face FCD in Robertson, and that has proven to be a gateway to great runs for us in the past. This hope that trend continues, even while we look for ways to end the trend of losing to the mediocre.

But before we turn the MLS ship around, let's whoop up on Pachuca at Robertson and get the lads one step closer to that $1,000,000. Then we'll get back to taking our rightful place amongst our domestic brethren.