Home misery continues with 1:0 loss to Cincinnati
September 19, 2020
It's a good thing Red Bull Arena is not allowing any fans in. It's hard to imagine anyone would want to watch this dreck anyway. For the third straight home game, Metro lost in a shutout, this time dropping a game to a bad Cincinnati team by a 1:0 scoreline. It was the first time the team lost three straight home league games since 2000. (In all competitions, 2009, but who is counting?)
Bradley Carnell made only two changes from last week's road victory over DC, inserting Brian White for the ineffectual Mathias Jorgensen and David Jensen for the injured Ryan Meara. And Jensen was terrific for most of the game. In the first half, he tracked back and reached far to stop a breakaway. In the second, he stuck his foot out on another breakaway attempt.
Note how we said "most of the game". For in the 85th minute, Haris Medunjanin sent a corner kick directly past Jensen, off the far post, and into the net. Yep. Metro lost on a goal straight off a corner kick. And here we thought we've seen everything.
They lost, because the offense was absolutely inept, finishing with just two shots on goal, both of them harmless. They lost because Red Bull decided to drop the best goalscorer in its history and replaced him with jack squat. They lost because this team is just devoid of any offensive creativity. No, really, we usually write about the best chances they had in the game. Did they have one quality opportunity? A half a chance, maybe, when Daniel Royer tried to take it out of the air with a high degree of difficulty, but missed wide. And then what?
In 2000, soon after the losing streak, Metro made a couple of smart trades, MLS gifted Metro Clint Mathis, and the ship was quickly righted. There are no quick fixes in 2020...
Lineup: Jensen, Pendant, Long, Parker, Nealis, Duncan, Casseres, Yearwood, Romero Gamarra, Royer, White. Subs: Valot, Fernandez, Tetteh, Barlow, Stroud.
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