I feel like a disgrace for neglecting my wonderful but few readers during this time of year when there is so little else to read in MLS circles. With this blog's constant focus on United roster developments, this should be my Super Bowl! But instead I've been wasting away on the pine. A few life changes have revised my priorities slightly (I'm a new father! Click to continue reading...

In my last post, I claimed that Tom Soehn had an ADR this year of 3.11. What does that mean? Is that good or bad?
Well as readers of this blog know, I've been passing down player ratings of either "Top Shelf", "Call", or "Rail" to players after every match. I've also been tracking those ratings over the course of the year, and displayed all of them here. Click to continue reading...

Win, loss, or tie, the result of this match didn't matter much to me as far as the CCL goes. We're just not a better team than Saprissa or Marathon, so even if we'd managed to beat Cruz Azul at home, we still had relatively no chance of advancing out of the group stages. But this match had a larger meaning than that. Click to continue reading...

After 60 minutes of this match, I was all ready to come on here and say I was wrong about wanting to punt the CCL. A goalless draw would have been a wonderful result. But as is typical with this club, we let up 2 soft goals off of shotty defending. And now we're staring up from the bottom of a fully stacked group. Click to continue reading...

By definition, the Donnety award goes to the player who has been the biggest disappointment this year. Yes, harsh, I know. But this award's definition could probably be interpreted in a couple different ways. And because I love controversy, of course I will leave that interpretation up to you. Do you give the award to a guy who has played well at times, but hasn't lived up to the hype or to his high salary? Click to continue reading...

A tie at home against a lesser Western Conference opponent certainly should feel like a loss. Somehow for me though, this one doesn't. Maybe it's because we outplayed Dallas, to the point where I think we really deserved the win. This felt like it should have ended at 2-1. Oh well. I guess we'll just have to steal back those extra two points when we play them again on the road in two weeks. Click to continue reading...

In a match where we were missing Emilio, Moreno, Namoff, Fred, Vide, and Peralta, a loss wasn't necessarily surprising. I guess the bright side is that we escaped without any more injuries! Also, I saw tonight that we've got some young players with a lot of heart, and that's got to count for something, even if it didn't earn us any points. Click to continue reading...

In a season that's had its fair share of ups and downs, we've finally got something to show for it! Maybe a title in the US Open Cup wasn't necessarily the goal for this season, but it's certainly an accomplishment the team should be proud of, and most importantly, its great that United has fought its way back into the international picture. Click to continue reading...

For the record, here are my player ratings from the two matches I missed while on vacation, based only on descriptions of the games given by Fullback, BDR, and Goff.
8/10/08: 4-1 loss at NYRB
Top shelf: Jaime Moreno
Call: Fred
Rail: Zach Wells, Pat Carroll, Marc Burch, Devon McTavish
8/12/08: 3-1 win in USOC Semi-finals vs NE:
Top shelf: Jaime Moreno, Luciano Emilio, Santino Quaranta
Call: Brian Namoff, Zach Wells, Ivan Guerrero
Rail: None
The other big thing that I missed while I was out was the formal acquisition of new starting goalkeeper Louis Crayton, and the other transactions surrounding that move. Click to continue reading...

I considered making the hour drive to RFK on Sunday morning to see the DC Reserves in action, but decided to play an impromptu game of tennis for the first time in 8 years against by brother-in-law. The good news: I still got it. The bad news: The Reserves lost.
But just in reading the summary of the match, there are several juicy tidbits that could have an impact on the first team:
1. Click to continue reading...

This was the first non-Open-Cup game of the season that I didn't see either in person or on tv, and that's probably a good one. Because aside from maybe the match at RSL early in the year, this was easily DC's worst performance yet. I should have taken the Fullback approach and prepped for this game with some red wine, or better yet, I should have been taking in the game with my arch nemesis Jose. Click to continue reading...

Due to a limited budget, I haven't made it to too many United games this year, but this was a game that I feel was probably much better to watch in person than on tv. Good atmosphere at RFK as always (and the lights stayed on!), but it seemed like less attendance than usual. All in all, a pretty exciting game, including a frantic final 10 minutes that had my usually quiet section standing throughout. Click to continue reading...

Just got finished watching the match immediately following my three hour drive home from Virginia Beach. At least I should say I just got finished watching 81 minutes of the match. I missed the rest thanks to the lights at RFK delaying the match past 10:00 pm. What's with that anyway? That's just embarassing. Click to continue reading...

Since I didn't witness the match myself, the following player ratings are based on excerpts taken from comments written about the game on the Soccer Insider:
1. "For me, Marc Burch was by far the player of the match, and not just because of the 2 goals. Through much of the game, he was among the most active player on the field. Click to continue reading...

I missed the match entirely. Wound up going shopping with Mrs. Shatz in advance of our Ocean City trip. First full-team match that I've missed all year.
But we did get some answers to the questions that I posed yesterday:
Does [Soehn] choose to start the highly paid Quavas Kirk in this match, or keep using him only in the safety of the Reserve division? Click to continue reading...

Just when it appeared that United had found its best starting XI, we have to go and get two players ejected. I guess we all know that players are going to have to sit out a game here and there for disciplinary reasons, but two at once can be brutal. Especially when those two are your highest paid player and most consistent player. Click to continue reading...

Who would have thought that United's first road victory of the year wouldn't come until June, against the Alpha Dog of the league Chicago? In the first half, this match felt like a couple earlier in the year, where DC dominated possession and had probably double the scoring opportunities, but failed to finish. Click to continue reading...

I'm slowly starting to calm down enough to admit that that was a pretty exciting and fast-paced game. But for United it was again a tale of two very different halves. Or maybe I should say a tale of the first 30 minutes and the last 60 minutes. Preki made tactical changes at halftime that clearly worked. Click to continue reading...

DC United suffered its first back-to-back shutouts since *gasp* the 2005 Eastern Conference semi-finals. Talk about bad memories. Let's get this over with.
No one really stood out to me actually. Even the beautifully consistent Bryan Namoff seemed pretty pedestrian.
1. Click to continue reading...

In the first match between the two players who will be linked in the minds of DC fans for the rest of their MLS careers, Christian Gomez dominated United and Gallardo with two assists. Even Facundo Erpen scored a revenge goal, in a match where he had shockingly zero bicycle kicks.
1. Click to continue reading...

I was really surprised to see United's players so happy after this match. Earlier in the year, the team was knocked out in the home leg of the Champions Cup after a victory that wasn't enough to earn them the aggregrate win. And the same thing happened tonight, as United falls 5-4 on aggregrate goals in the 2008 Ben Cup. Click to continue reading...

After such a tiring and emotionally draining match just three days earlier, I guess it was pretty easy to see this coming. Especially once you saw the starting lineup. Gallardo, Martinez, and Wells deserved the rest, so I won't complain about the lineup, especially since I don't think that starting our true top XI would have even really made a big difference in this game. Click to continue reading...

2-1 was probably a pretty fair result to this match, with all three goals being scored by substitutes. Dyachenko's goal was well-deserved from the run of play, and Niell's goal was probably a bit lucky for him to get the ball in that position, but it was great to see him finish to stop the Kpene comparisons. Click to continue reading...

At least it appears that way as far as I see. Goff told us this morning that David Blumer and Josh Gardner would not be offered contracts by the club. So if you look back at this post, you'd realize that there are only 18 players left who I've considered as being in competition for the 18 senior roster spots. Click to continue reading...

Gasp! And here we were thinking that MLS only made rule changes in order to benefit the Galaxy!
Maybe this was announced earlier and I missed it, but a change to the MLS roster rules has come up today only because of Goff's latest post announcing the signing of Justin Moose to a Developmental contract, and the news that Kpene and Dyachenko are still eligible for Developmental contracts. Click to continue reading...

United's second pick in the Supplemental Draft went to a British player from WVU (a Britaineer??) named Dan Stratford.
Big question for DC United fans is... Does he have a green card? Because all of a sudden we're getting pretty low on foreign player slots. From the little I've read on Stratford so far, I'm thinking he does not. Click to continue reading...

If I had a choice of one player that would leave DC United in the offseason and I wouldn't be upset at all, it would be Jay Nolly. If I had a choice of two players that would leave DC United in the offseason and I wouldn't be upset at all, it would be Jay Nolly and Bryan Arguez.
Reports are that Arguez will be transferring away from MLS to Hertha Berlin of the Bundesliga, for a sum of around US$350,000, of which DC gets I think around $250K, with the rest going to the league. Click to continue reading...

We're sans Olsen, Moreno, Moose, Namoff, and Kpene. My picks:
----Addlery---------Emilio-------
Fred--------Gomez---------Mediate
------------Simms----------------
Gros--Boswell-Vanney--McTavish
------------Perkins---------------
You can count on DeRoux and Dyachenko seeing minutes in this one. Click to continue reading...

Goff reports that I was somewhat correct:
"...the lineup is Namoff, Erpen, Boswell, Gros, Fred, Olsen, Carroll, Gomez, Dyachenko and Emilio."
---------Dyachenko----------Emilio------------
Fred------------Gomez--------------Olsen----
-----------------Carroll-------------------------
Gros-------The Boz-----Erpen------Namoff----
---------------Jay Nolly (! Click to continue reading...