Thursday Night Futbol - The Trouble with TiVo

So, between my DVR's mysterious refusal to start recording on time, rural electrical grid power troubles, and the weather delay, I caught about 15 minutes of this match. The wonderful MLB - oooops, I mean MLS - highlights show goals and celebrations, but not much else. At least I know that Jesus Loves Me - according to Fred at least. Phew!

Rather than pulling the pundit's tag from my fedora, I'll just plow on with a few notes:

1. Addlery looked pretty good. From what I saw he had a decent touch on the ball and best of all, he scored on a header! For DC United! From a corner! We've got a decent array of weapons up top. All we're probably missing is a pure burner with Walker out for the season.
   
2. Fred finally scored and looked good doing so. A slashing run on the give-and-go and then tucking it under the keeper for a nice finish. A sign of things to come? Fred, Gomez, and Olsen all scoring from midfield takes the pressure off of the forwards a bit and spreading the goals around makes us hard to mark out of games, as teams were doing early in the season.
3. Being on the right side of at least one 4-1 result tonight makes the US loss a bit easier to swallow. Lots of goals is nothing to sneeze at, particularly with the state of our defense meaning that we need to score bunches to get wins. Last season's run of 1-0 results is not going to happen this year.
4. Luciano Emilio, hereafter to be known in the hallowed halls of the Fullback Files as Emiligol, continues to put the ball in the net and climb the golden boot charts. Preseason predictions of 20+ may have been a bit optimistic, but 15 is a distinct possibility. Assuming we've got a handful of other guys in the 5-10 goal range, that's a pretty good goal haul we're looking at this year.
   

Bottom line - we bounced back. We scored goals in our house and maybe the result was a bit flattering, but we won by a comfortable margin against a team we should beat. That's going to be important for the team's confidence heading into the teeth of away matches against two of the better sides in this league - KC and Houston. If we can get some decent results in these matches, we'll really start to pile the pressure on the table-toppers heading into the All-Star break.

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Rumors are floating about that DC is looking to swap Erpen for the Rapid's Greg Vanney. Hmmm. I haven't been impressed by Vanney since his return to MLS, but Erpen often scares me, so what's worse, disappointment or fear? Vanney brings experience and little else besides some glory days in the early years of MLS. Rumors of a wicked free kick that I haven't seen in ages, some ability to distribute the ball from the back, a Euro excursion of questionable success and an undistinguished national team career, a distinct lack of speed, supposed consistency - am I missing anything?

Color me underwhelmed unless we're looking at him merely as cover with an eye to another move to upgrade the back line. Of course, he could show up and start pinging balls over distance off the left boot to forwards and wide players, opening up a new dimension for our offense - in which case I'll be sure that...wait for it...Jesus Loves Me.