1:4 Toronto New York Owusu Forsberg Tolkin Morgan Manoel 10.02.24 · League

You would think we would be incredibly happy with Metro's 4:1 trashing of Toronto. After all, it's the team's first win in two and a half months! A rousing road victory to wash out the bitter taste of last weekend! A guarantee to avoid the dreaded playoff play-in game! Errr... OK.

Don't get us wrong, winning is better than losing, but this is somewhat anticlimactic. Sure, avoiding the play-in game is nice, sure, finishing fourth is nice because you theoretically get home field advantage in the first round (that didn't really work out two years ago, did it?), sure. But we're under no illusions here. This team is not doing anything when the playoffs come around. So what's another regular season game?

Well, it was a rather nice regular season game, as Metro had little trouble dispatching Toronto. Emil Forsberg finally started, and did look lively when he had the ball. He also scored the first goal, on a penalty kick in the 27th minute. That came after a defender went to the ground to drag Lewis Morgan with him... Somehow the referee missed that in live play, Ryan Meara got a yellow on the bench for arguing, but VAR made the right call.

The hosts looked to have tied the game in the 40th minute, with a close-range header from a corner kick. Sadly for them, our old pal Derrick Etienne was blatantly interfering with Carlos Coronel, and the goal did not stand. Then, just three minutes after the break, Morgan, with four players surrounding him outside the box, somehow sprung John Tolkin with a flat ball to the left. The Olympian, with no one around him, took it into the penalty area and converted a bouncer past the overrated Sean Johnson.

Toronto got a penalty kick of their own in the 66th after a Peter Stroud foul at the top of the box. But three minutes later, Cameron Harper was bowled over on the other end, and this time it was Lewis Morgan converting from the spot to restore the two-goal lead.

Toronto's vastly overpaid DP Federico Bernardeschi got a stupid second yellow in the 75th, so the result was rarely in doubt from that point on. Two minutes from time, Elias Manoel got on the scoresheet after dribbling through most of Toronto's half and slotting past helpless Johnson.

The other reason we're not that excited about the win? Metro can no longer break its league tie record, set in 2011! Well... they can still tie it.

Lineup: Coronel, Tolkin, Eile, Reyes, Nealis, Edelman, Donkor, Stroud, Forsberg, Morgan, Vanzeir. Subs: Nealis, Harper, Carballo, Manoel, Gjengaar.