Houston Dynamo 5, Real Salt Lake 1: Rate the Players and Quick Thoughts

At the beginning of the year I introduced a new way for the Dynamo Theory community to be a part of Player Ratings. After matches everyone will get a chance to submit how each player did on a scale of 1 to 10 which will be averaged out in a later article. These ratings are interesting because we all view how players perform differently. Rating websites like WhoScored.com view things from an analytical perspective, but a statistic, even one as big as a goal, doesn’t quite tell the entire story as some goals are bigger and more important to a game than others. I think seeing how we as a community feel can create fun conversations. Of course, how we feel individually matters as well so please comment about player performances as you wish in the comments.

Quick Thoughts about the Game:

1) The Houston Dynamo played like they do at home: really, really well. There are certain differences I’ve seen in how they play at home vs. on the road. From a mentality standpoint, at home this team plays with reckless abandon in how they approach the game offensively. They are never satisfied with the number of goals they’ve scored and constantly put themselves in positions to add to their tally. On the road everything is done with more caution as to not give away the ball or get caught up the field. This team cannot play our usual style with that mentality and those tactics because it will not work nor has it worked. You can see some of the differences in how forwards pressure defenders, their use of the long ball and long switch increases at home, and the midfield pushes up to help attack rather than be worried about a counter. This is what we need to do and it showed how successful it can be against Real Salt Lake.

2) This was the second time this season we’ve won by at least four goals. The first time was our 4-0 win over Orlando City SC. This team can dominate opponents when they play their style. The players looked unselfish trying to get others to get on the score sheet and movement was great. While this win was impressive, it wasn’t quite as dominating as the Orlando game where they had no answers for our game plan. Real Salt Lake was able to create some quality chances from time to time and did score on a free kick. That’s actually okay, because our style more or less is fine with opponents getting the occasional goal, we just have to score more and boy did we score more. I will say though, the defense definitely needed to help out a little bit more than they did because Tyler Deric was forced to make 8 saves.

3) I am a little concerned about the number of minutes we’ve put on players. With the game against FC Dallas last Sunday and a game in Seattle this coming Sunday, Wilmer Cabrera could have made a few changes to his lineup to give players some rest. Heavy legs clearly weren’t a factor in this game, but that could be different in Seattle. Cabrera used the same starting lineup that we saw in Seattle with the exception of Dylan Remick in at LB while DaMarcus Beasley is training with the USMNT.

4) With the win the Dynamo climbed to the top of the Western Conference. It’s hard to believe that after the road trip we just saw, but they were able to absorb those losses and the draw with how well they play at home.

Rate the Players: