but it's not a losss

Image via Wikipedia saturday night saw the new york red bulls take on dc united. to be honest, it was a pretty ugly game on our part. we were lucky to walk out of there with a 0-0 draw.

but then again, a road tie against dc united is never something to scoff at. i think the real tragedy comes when you look at our play compared to our three-game winning streak.

our midfield was nearly non-existent. we tried to play the balls up the wings, we fell back on old habits with a ton of long balls over the top, and our forwards were lucky to get a clean look at the ball.

nonetheless, we created some chances and had several opportunities to win the game. however, so did dc united and a tenacious backline and a goalkeeper on his game kept us with a clean sheet.

what happened saturday night?

• osorio didn't start jorge rojas. i get it. he was tired, he hadn't trained with the team the full week, he had just flown in after the visa trouble. but putting him in in the 70th minute? if we've learned anything about rojas over the past month, it's that he takes 15 minutes to warm up. he seems to need to let the game flow about him for a while before he makes sense of it. the last 20 minuts of the game didn't afford him nearly enough time to get into the game.
• the long balls. i know that in our recent winning ways we've used the long ball to great effect - but those have mainly been on deep counter-attacks, as opposed to what we did saturday night: boot the ball 60 yards in an attempt to find the feet of a red bull surrounded by 4 defenders. we've got to play smater ball that that. not only did we not find out guy, we just gave the ball right back to dc.
  
• our midfield was a ghost. pietravallo and stammler did their best, but magee is not a central midfielder. i'm sorry if that upsets some people, but he belongs up top. i have no idea why osorio decided to put magee in the one position that he struggled significantly in all season and not up top as a striker where he's looked incredible lately. dane richards at the top might make sense, but it makes more sense to keep him on the wing where his speed is the most dangerous. he inevitably had to drift back downfield anyway to get involved with plays since we didn't have a midfield to get him the ball, which effectively left angel alone at the top again. i think we've learned that doesn't work.
  
• jimenez made a stupid mistake in the 91st minute. it didn't matter, but apart from that mistake, i thought the kid played nasty good football. good lord. put him and cichero in the middle, put pietravallo and stammler in front of them, and watch forwards across the league go into panice. we've got a steel wall in the middle moving forward.
  
• conway looked confident, strong, and on his game. several key stops kept the red bulls in the hunt, and earned him yet another clean sheet and the team a point on the road. and boy was he happy when moreno missed the penalty kick. if there was ever a sign that our luck might be changing, i'd hang my hat on that one.
  

the real question here is: who gets the atlantic cup? three games were played this year, two ended 4-1, and one ended 0-0. what's the tiebreaker here?

we are still tied with dc united for fourth place after saturday's game, but we didn't lose any ground. we've got a chance to make up some ground this saturday as we travel to the chicago fire and look to steal some points from a team in front of us.