Also at SoccerCentric.

There was, in short, nowhere to go but down for the Red Devils – and seemingly, they’ve already found the bottom, losing 4-1 at Manchester City on Sunday in a game that probably deserved to be an 8-0 loss. Kun Aguero scored twice, either side of halftime, to lead City to a comprehensive stomping of their rivals.

I suppose Moyes can take heart from two things. First, the season is only five games old, and odds are that by Christmas, United will be right back among the league leaders.

Second, it’s worth remembering that Ferguson himself once went to City and got stomped, 5-1 in the fall of 1989. Fans called for him to be fired. Journalists encouraged the protests. The manager would later describe the period that followed as “the darkest period he had ever suffered.”

United stuck with him, though they hadn’t won anything since his hiring as manager in 1986. Three years later, they won the league, the first steps on their road to twenty years of dominance in England.

He’s spent most of this year publicly berating his players and getting into on-field arguments with his team’s fans, and finally, the players went to the club’s CEO and helped get him fired.

He will be remembered by Sunderland fans for beating Newcastle 3-0, and really, not much else.

Elsewhere, Arsenal beat Stoke 3-1 and Tottenham beat Norwich 1-0, while Liverpool lost 1-0 against Southampton, meaning that – for the moment – the two North London sides are tied atop the league table.

The results set up a battle between the league’s two best teams on Sunday in Seattle, as Thierry Henry and the Red Bulls try to pull away from the Eastern Conference pack, and Eddie Johnson and the Sounders try to do the same in the West. (And if you think I’m mentioning this because I will be at Sunday’s game – yep, you got it.)

NOTE: This appeared at RandBall, your home for changing things up.

I believe Christian Ponder is not the answer at quarterback for the Vikings. I suspect most Vikings fans would agree with that; in two weeks at the helm his fall, he’s yet to show anything that we didn’t see from him in previous seasons. He is who he is, which is not who the Vikings need.

Unfortunately, there are no good options to replace him. Elite quarterbacks don’t become available on the free-agent market, nor are they available in trades (though it’s a shame that Cleveland doesn’t have one). The only way to get one is through the draft, and the best way to get one in the draft is to have the top pick, and the way to get the top pick in the draft is to be very, very bad.

This brings up an existential question: is it wrong to cheer against the Vikings this year?

It is certainly true that an 0-2 start is not a death sentence. It also feels soul-crushingly wrong to root in any way against Adrian Peterson, who we all should appreciate on that ephemeral, otherworldy basis that comes along only a few times in any sports fan’s lifetime. But still, it’s worth noting that even Peterson, a pretty good defense, and a lot of good luck last season were only enough to squeak into the playoffs despite generally poor play at QB, the most important position in any team sport.

Maybe you believe that Ponder’s one week away from turning it around. Or maybe you’re hoping the 2013 Vikings can wake up the Ghosts of Trent Dilfer and somehow start winning games without any help from the man under center. But if you’re not that optimistic, it’s hard not to hop on the “Tank For Teddy” bandwagon, and start rooting for the Purple to overtake the Browns and Jaguars at the bottom of the NFL standings.

*On with the links:

I loved this story about “baseball archeologist” David Block, who has dug up evidence that baseball – in some form or another – was being played in the middle of the *eighteenth century, predating all of the current myths about the game’s invention by a century or so.

*It’s hockey season, and Sean McIndoe has a few New Year’s Resolutions that all of us hockey fans should vow to keep for the next year. (We hockey fans are known for both our moderation and our ability to keep our resolutions.)

*I find it difficult to beat Joe Posnanski reminiscing about Vladimir Guerrero, the silliest great player of my lifetime.

*Vancouver-based hockey fan Jay Adams became a Florida Panthers season-ticket holder for one year, because hey, why not? (The best part: he felt the need to read up on Florida’s young prospects, just so he could use their names when he tried to call up the front office to berate them, in true season-ticket-holder style.)

*And finally: The Giants may be 0-2, but Justin Tuck has found a way of dealing with it.

*NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric. *

In his second year as a pro, wide midfielder Miguel Ibarra started almost every game of the spring season for Minnesota. Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan. Based on his excellent rookie season, Ibarra was given more freedom to try to find space to create havoc; instead, he tended to cause chaos. Crosses went wildly awry. Shots flew off into space.

By the end of the spring, he was coming off the bench, and appeared to be mired firmly in a sophomore slump. The team took a week break before resuming preparations for the fall season, and according to Ibarra, he took the break to have a talk with himself.

“I just felt like the first half, it wasn’t me, I wasn’t playing how I know I can play,” he said. “We took a week off, and I was just like, I’m going come back and I’m going to work hard until I get back into how I know how to play. I want to make it to the championship again and have another chance to win it. I’m just trying to help out the team.”

By the time United’s trip to San Antonio rolled around, the 23-year-old was back in the starting lineup, and he responded with his best performance of the year. Ibarra spent the evening causing problems for the Scorpions back line, culminating in one of the great individual efforts by a Minnesota player this year. After winning the ball back from an impossible position, he put in a cross that eluded the keeper and was shouldered home by Connor Tobin.

Since then, he’s re-established himself as one of Minnesota’s most dangerous offensive threats – and he looks like the Ibarra of old.

Yesterday’s results have put Minnesota seven points out of first place, but Ibarra – buoyed by his recent performances – believes United still has a chance of making it to the Soccer Bowl. “I think we’re still in it right now. I don’t think anyone should count us out,” he said. “I don’t think we have been playing bad. We just have to keep working and I think we’ll get into the spot.”

Travel squad holds no major surprises

United makes three changes from the squad that traveled to New York last week. Defender Justin Davis is back in the 18, along with forward Travis Wall and midfielder Michael Reed. Making way are midfielders Omar Daley, Sean de Silva, and Kentaro Takada.

I asked head coach Manny Lagos about Davis’s omission last week – surprising, given that Davis started every game in the spring and the beginning of the fall season, until picking up a minor knee injury a frew weeks ago. The head coach chalked it up to a need for a few more attacking substitutes. Said the coach, “We didn’t want to have too many defensive subs in the last game because we felt like we needed a little more offensive play, and we had Brian [Kallman] to cover us at the back that game.”

The other notable omission, perhaps, is midfielder Sinisa Ubiparipovic. Last week, I wrote (mistakenly) that he had missed out on the travel squad; he was still serving his mandatory suspension for being sent off against Edmonton.

The full squad: GK – Van Oekel, Hildebrandt; D – Venegas, Pitchkolan, Tobin, Dias, Kallman, Davis; M – Ibarra, Franks, Mallace, Rodriguez, Reed, Bracalello; F – Campos, Ambersley, Griffin, Wall

The pressure’s on

As I mentioned, the top of the league moved farther away from Minnesota on Saturday. Both New York (now leading the league with 15 points) and Tampa Bay (14 points, and still no fall losses) won on Saturday, putting Minnesota seven points out of first and six out of second.

United cannot afford to lose this week, or next week, when they host San Antonio. Even draws might not be good enough. And Lagos knows that the pressure is on his team – even more so than usual.

“I think that’s a part of finding out what kind of team you are and finding out what kind of group we have,” he said. “We can lament about the points we dropped at home and the play we’ve done really well on the road, but we still haven’t gotten consistent in terms of grouping wins together.”

Just in case…

I had to ask Lagos about last week’s incident with Fort Lauderdale’s coaches in Edmonton, in which the entire coaching staff was thrown out of the stadium by the cops. He explained to me that NASL rules do permit coaches to communicate to the bench, as long as they aren’t disrupting or interrupting the game.

In other words, Minnesota’s coaching staff is ready to go. “We’ll have something just in case,” said Lagos, laughing, “whether [assistant coach] **Carl [Craig] **or myself gets tossed – or we both do.”

Game details

Today’s match kicks off at 3pm in Edmonton. The match will be available to watch live at nasl.com/live, or you can head to Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis for the official team watch party.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

He’s played only seven games for Minnesota, but already, one fan has started a drive to clone midfielder Calum Mallace.

If it was possible, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, as the 23-year-old brings qualities that Minnesota desperately needed. Among United’s midfielders, he’s the most adept at both defending and attacking, helping to mute chances from the other side and turning that defense into offensive pressure for Minnesota.

“I’ve enjoyed playing that box-to-box midfielder type of role,” said Mallace. “I enjoy getting back, making tackles, and helping defensively. You can score all the goals in the world, but if you keep conceding at the back, that’s the end of the game. It’s always good to get back and help defensively, and then I feel like for me to get forward, I’ve got the engine to go all day long up and down.”

Don’t let the red hair and the Scottish birthplace fool you; Mallace is just about as Minnesotan as they come. His family moved to the state at a young age, and he starred for Henry Sibley High School and the Woodbury Predators club team before playing in college at Marquette University. His club coach, Don Gramenz, was an eleven-year Minnesota Thunder veteran, and a former Thunder coach; his brother Craig is a Thunder alum as well.

Officially, he’s on loan to Minnesota from Montreal. In reality, Minnesota’s just been nice enough to loan him to the Impact.

About the only thing that’s been missing from Mallace’s game this fall has been tallies on the scoresheet. He’s shown a willingness to shoot, and a willingness to get forward, but he’s yet to score – and he’s frustrated about it, too.

“They’re not going in the back of the net,” he said. “Shooting from distance is something that I need to work on, to test the goalkeeper from distance, but it’s also good to create chances and play those balls in behind the defense and get those forwards in those holes as well. I take responsibility for not getting any goals so far this year, but we’ve still got some games left, I’ll see if I can put some in.”

It’s a position that Minnesota hasn’t had too many goals from. Michael Reed scored once from a central midfield spot, and Aaron Pitchkolan – since moved to center back – scored early in the season from a corner, but that’s been it from goals from central midfielders. Effectively, that’s only one goal from someone other than a striker or a winger in the attack.

Heck, defenders Cristiano Dias, Brian Kallman, and Connor Tobin have combined for four.

Mallace says the team doesn’t have any sort of bias towards playing the ball wide; it’s more about attacking a team from the available angles. “We have Lucas [Rodriguez] and Miguel [Ibarra] who are both fast players that like to combine down the outside, so there’s nothing wrong with going there,” he said. “We’ve got myself and **Floyd [Franks] **and Michael Reed and different players who can play in the middle where we can keep it in there as well, so I think we’re dynamic in that we don’t always have to go wide or in the middle. We can do both and I think that’s good.”

Edmonton, this week’s opponent, certainly won’t be broken down without a fight. The Eddies have yet to allow more than one goal in a game at home; they are a defense-first kind of team.

Mallace, however, is feeling at least a little optimistic. “We’re going to have to press them from all different angles,” he said. “And maybe I can hit one in from distance as well.”

*NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric. *

It seems somewhat counter-intuitive to say it, but with half the season left, Minnesota United has run out of time.

They can’t continue to struggle. They can’t continue to put in good performances but fail to get results, or put in indifferent performances and come away with nothing. Even though they’re technically only four points out of first place, there are four teams in between them and the league-leading New York Cosmos – all four of which are capable themselves of putting together a title-winning run.

It’s a good bet that, to win the fall season, Minnesota will have to get to at least 23 or 24 points in the standings.  With seven games to go, they only have eight points; in order to leapfrog all the teams in front of them, they’ll need at least four or five wins in those seven games.

It’s hard to be optimistic about that, given that they’ve won just six of their 19 games so far this year, and that they haven’t kept a clean sheet defensively since April 20, and that they’ve won by more than one goal just twice all year.

The effort from the team has been there, and for much of every game, Minnesota has controlled the field. United will go through stretches where the other team can’t get near the ball, and the field appears titlted towards the opponent’s goal.

Rarely, though, does the team manage to convert the chances they generate into goals – and, at least once in every game, they suffer some kind of defensive lapse to allow the opponent onto the scoreboard. It can’t continue, not if United still has designs on playing Atlanta in the Soccer Bowl.

The next two weeks will define Minnesota’s chances for the fall title. This week, they travel to Edmonton, who are tied for sixth with United. Next week, San Antonio – one-point-this-fall San Antonio, completely-in-shambles San Antonio – visits Blaine.

Anything less than six points, against those two teams, and you can just about count United out of the running for the fall championship.

Edmonton, this week’s opponent, will be the tougher of the two matches. The Montons are currently in the midst of an astonishing run; they have played five consecutive 1-1 draws, which must surely be a record of some kind. The betting would have to be on a low-scoring game; Edmonton has scored more than one goal at home just twice all season, and has yet to allow an opponent to score more than once in those same games.

Part of that has to be ascribed to their home field. Edmonton plays its home games at Clarke Stadium, a remodeled Canadian football field, with artificial turf that appears to be little more than painted concrete and a football gridiron criss-crossing the pitch. Occasionally, as with last week’s game against Fort Lauderdale, gale-force winds blow from one end of the field or the other. It is, in short, not the nicest place in North America to play a soccer game (or watch one – something reflected in the Edmonton crowds, which have averaged just shy of 2,400 this fall).

An odd field such as Clarke, though, does tend to give an advantage to the team that’s used to playing there. Minnesota hasn’t won in Edmonton since April of last year, an epic 4-3 victory that included a player from both sides getting sent off and Devin Del Do scoring the winner from a long Brian Kallman throw in second-half stoppage time.

Edmonton is likely to play a similar lineup to the team that drew 1-1 in Minnesota two weeks ago. Daryl Fordyce and Corey Hertzog have started the past two games up front, with central midfielders Neil Hlavaty and Chris Nurse (last month’s league Player of the Month) slotting in behind and Robert Garrett and Gagan Dosanjh on the wings. The back line is headlined by the captain, center back Albert Watson, and goalkeeper Lance Parker, who is semi-famous (semi-infamous?) for modeling men’s undergarments in his spare time.

This is the challenge that thus awaits Minnesota. But they’re out of time to wait on addressing that challenge head-on.

This week on the podcast, we talk to Parker Hageman about his #GrandDrunkRailroad event. Plus: Ponder complaining and the attendant Teddy Bridgewater update, a Wild season preview, some Twins talk, and at the end, a bunch of giggling.

I don’t know much about Rochester manager Gene Glynn. I do know that he’s traveling with the Twins for the rest of the season, which is funny to me, so I wrote something typically nonsensical about it.

NOTE: This will appear at RandBall, your home for RandBall.

Football is unquestionably America’s biggest sport; there’s a pretty good argument to be made that the two most popular American sports leagues are the NFL and college football. In places like Texas, high school football might come it at #3.

Knowing this, though, why isn’t there more football? I don’t mean expanded seasons for the current leagues – they’re long and punishing enough. But it’s strange that football is only an August-to-early February effort in America.

The Canadian Football League and Arena Football have variously been broadcast on TV, but neither has earned a particularly wide following, in part because they are weird and different from good old classic football. And various non-affiliated minor leagues – the UFL, the XFL, even going back to the WLAF, the USFL, and the WFL – have tried, and failed, either because they tried to take on the NFL (bad move) or seemed more like a carnival sideshow.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that Americans just don’t like to watch a minor league, which a spring football league would definitely be. Still, it seems like there’s room for another. It could be in college towns with no pro team., or maybe just in large non-NFL markets. Given the sport’s popularity, surely there has to be a way to make it work – and end our long spring and summer without football.

*On with the links:

Nick Nelson at TwinsCentric thinks the Twins have so much money to spend this offseason that they can’t help but spend. Personally, I think the Twins are like that old geezer that remembers when hamburgers were a nickel and a pair of shoes cost $10, and so even though he knows prices have gone up, he just can’t quite bring himself to head for the shoe store or the McDonald’s drive-through, because *things are just too darn spendy these days.

*The win, in baseball, is a stupid statistic. Here is more evidence of that.

*Bill Barnwell at Grantland breaks down Chip Kelly’s awesome new Eagles offense.

*Also at Grantland, Zach Lowe makes a strong case for the 40-minute NBA game. (I would support both this and an NBA regular season with fewer games. Both would make the league more awesome.)

*The Economist says that women’s sports are starting to make up some ground in the areas of TV viewership and commercial support. (I link to this partially – maybe mostly – because the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center, and its director, Mary Jo Kane, are heavily mentioned. Hey everyone! They’re talking about us!)

*And finally: you may not be able to appreciate the genius of this old-timey-ified Arsenal roster in full, unless you’re a soccer fan, but I think everyone can laugh at pictures of people with outstanding mustaches and/or funny hats.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

It’s fair to say that virtually everyone associated with Minnesota United wanted to make today’s trip to New York, which offers both the city and a game against the Cosmos, one of the big names in soccer history. But two players recently in the starting lineup, Justin Davis and Sinisa Ubiparipovic, have missed out.

Ubiparipovic’s omission might make some sense; he was sent off for kicking an opponent after just one minute on the pitch as a substitute, last week, so he may well be in the doghouse. Davis’s, though, is somewhat curious.

Davis started every game at left back in the spring season, as well as the first four of the fall. He made the trip to San Antonio the following week, but didn’t play, due to what I was told was a knee issue. Since then, though, he’s apparently had two full weeks of normal practice, yet he didn’t even dress for last week’s game against Edmonton, and now he’s not on this trip, either.

Judging by what I saw at training on Thursday (and you can take that with as many grains of salt as you want), United will again start with Aaron Pitchkolan and Connor Tobin at center back this week, Kevin Venegas at right back, and Cristiano Dias at left back. Brian Kallman is in the squad, but appears set to start on the bench yet again this week.

Head coach Manny Lagos described himself as “happy” with the team’s back four. “I can’t say as a group we’ve been ecstatic, because we haven’t had a shutout,” he said. “I think we’re still trying to solve problems on the field the right way.”

Obviously, Lagos has seen something he likes from Dias and Venegas. That’s the only explanation for why Davis and Kallman, who were mainstays at fullback for years, suddenly aren’t on the field.

United’s squad for the game tonight: Campos, Ambersley, Griffin; Rodriguez, Ibarra, Mallace, Franks, Takada, Bracalello, Daley, de Silva; Pitchkolan, Venegas, Tobin, Dias, Brian Kallman; Van Oekel, Hildebrant.

Bright lights, big city

As I mentioned, it’s United’s first trip to New York – and Pitchkolan is ready for what he said is going to be a “fun weekend.”

“The Cosmos have a lot of brand power,” he said. “I think when they announced they were coming into the league last year, there was a lot of buzz about it. Obviously it’s going to be great to play there. I know they’ve been getting good crowds. The Cosmos name is a name that, people who follow soccer, know the Cosmos. ”

However, Lagos – true to coaching form – downplayed anything but a chance to get three points. “I look at the game more just in terms of an opponent, a very good opponent that’s going to give us a lot of challenges,” he said. “I really don’t try to look at anything past that for the most part.”

Emory re-appears, in Texas

Released Toronto defender Logan Emory spent the summer on trial with Minnesota, but couldn’t come to terms on a contract for the fall. Fans that vaguely wondered what had become of him can wonder no longer – he signed this week with San Antonio, and will be available for the Scorpions’ game in Atlanta.

It wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise to see him in the starting eleven; he’s vastly experienced, and San Antonio needs a replacement for the suspended Kevin Harmse. There are a few rumors floating around that Harmse, so recently the team captain, has quietly been released; he still appears on the Scorpions team roster, though, so it’s possible those rumors are premature.

Game details

It’s a 6pm start tonight, and for the first time this season, the game will NOT be available to watch on the league and team websites. The Cosmos have a TV contract with One World Sports (whatever that is), so you’ll have to head to http://www.oneworldsports.com/watch in advance to register; once you register, you should be able to watch the game at the same link.

As usual, the team will host an official watch party at Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis, while the Dark Clouds supporters group will gather at the Nomad World Pub, just off the U of M’s West Bank.