First off, thanks to Shatz for asking me to fill in for a minute around these parts, and thanks to Twitter (Follow me @the_amt!) for bringing fans and bloggers together. Cue the cheesy wink.

Since Shatz asked me to guest-blog last week, I've been trying to think of a topic to cover, but most of them just caused me mental and/or emotional pain.

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The voting for attacking midfielders has gone pretty much as anticipated so far, with heavy support for three fan favorites in Quaranta, Pontius, and Barklage, and an obvious dissatisfaction with Fred and Allen. The only moderate surprise to me has been that Gomez and Szetela are not both closer to the 50/50 mark. Click to continue reading...

I've always intended for DCUMD to be more of a community for United fans than just a guy writing a blog. We've seen this space morph from a blog that was supposed to cover the connection between DCU and UMD into a blog that is pretty much exclusively related to DC United. Recently I've found myself writing fewer opinion pieces and spending more time on tracking the way the team evolves over the year.

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We've covered the forwards, and we've covered the front office. Heck, our front office results actually have been 100% correct so far, with Tom Soehn leaving the team and Kasper and Payne set to return. We'll have to wait a while to find out if our forward results are correct, but in the meantime, let's see what everyone has to say about our attacking midfielders. Click to continue reading...

I've been a little bit surprised by some of the fan reactions we've seen over the past few days since the announced departure of Tom Soehn as head coach of DC United. The most common sentiment has been "Thanks for your service", which is nice, but maybe not entirely genuine coming from the same people who were writing (and probably chanting at games) "FIRE SOEHN" so frequently in the past.

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The first round of River or Life with the DC United front office has gone pretty much as expected so far, with Tom Soehn just 0% Life, Dave Kasper over 50% but not convincingly, and Kevin Payne somewhere between 50 and 100. Now let's see where the forwards on the roster stand.
The thing about playing River or Life is that its somewhat up to the voter's discretion how you want to interpret the two choices, and I think that's going to come into play for a lot of us with some of these forwards. Click to continue reading...

When posting the 2009 ADRs earlier this week, I asked what jumped out at you. Well here's some questions that jumped out at me:
1. Is Dejan Jakovic really all that good? The biggest surprise for me on the whole was Jakovic's even 3.00 rating. After winning three Benny Awards, you would have thought his rating would be among the best on the team. Click to continue reading...

Contrary to popular belief, I don't give player ratings each game just for fun. I also use these ratings to formulate the yearly Annual DCUMD Ratings, or ADRs. Each Top Shelf is worth 5 points, each Call is worth 3, and each Rail is worth 1.
Soehn C R C C R T T R T R C R R R T R R (2. Click to continue reading...

The 6th Annual United Awards Reception isn't the only United Awards Reception going on tonight. Because it's also time to announce the winners of the 2009 Benny Awards!

1. The Richie Award for the most underrated player goes to Bryan Namoff
2. The Nelly Award for the best newcomer goes to Dejan Jakovic
3. The Convey Award for the best rookies goes to Chris Pontius
4. The Donnety Award for the biggest disappointment goes to Danny Szetela
5. The Grosy Award for the ballsiest player goes to Ben Olsen
6. The Freddy Award for the biggest story goes to Chris Pontius and Rodney Wallace
7. The Harkesy Award for the greatest leader goes to Ben Olsen
8. The Popie Award for the best defender goes to Dejan Jakovic
9. The Etchy Award for the team's MVP goes to Dejan Jakovic
10. The Benny Award for the highest ADR rating goes to Chris Pontius

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Stealing on old bit from the late Big O and Dukes Show, we will spend the next month or so playing "River or Life" with members of the DC United organization, starting with the front office, and then moving on to the players, by position. In an offseason that is bound to include multitudes of changes throughout the club, this will be a great way to show the team who we the fans want to see return next year. Click to continue reading...

Plenty of fans were saying last night that this match was like a microcosm of our season. I disagree. A microcosm of our season would have included DC United grabbing an early lead and taking it into halftime. It also would have included many chances to go even further ahead, but we would have had multiple goals disallowed and/or our opponent would have scored after some poor officiating. Click to continue reading...

By defintion, the Etchy Award goes to DC United's most valuable player. The winner of the award should be the player who United can least afford to live without, and who gives the team the best chance of winning. I'm going to present this award a bit differently because I want to give you more choices and less bias. Click to continue reading...

Given the unfortunate results of the Chicago/Chivas and Marathon/San Juan matches last night, a WIN for DC United on Saturday has now become all the more crucial. The number of playoff spots at stake just dropped from 3 to 2 with the Fire's victory. What's worse though is that the loss by Chivas USA means that Columbus has now clinched the Supporter's Shield, and therefore will have nothing to play for in their final match against the Revolution on Sunday.

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By definition, the Popie award goes to United's best defensive player in 2009. The award's namesake is former national team defender Eddie Pope. Not only is Pope widely recognized as the best defender in United's history, but he is also responsible for the most important goal in United's history.
Last year's winner was Bryan Namoff with over 50% of the vote. Click to continue reading...

Finishing 1-1 against the leader of the Mexican Primera Division on the road is a better result than most of us expected, and probably a better result than we deserved. Still, thanks to some inspired play by a few individuals, and some poor shooting by Toluca, we emerged with a single point.
A win would have secured our spot in the Champions' League quarterfinals, but let's not count ourselves out yet. Click to continue reading...