Preview: Atlanta United at DC United

DC United confronts its funhouse mirror image

Christian Benteke, Peglow, and Jackson Hopkins returned to the pitch last week with substitute appearances against Nashville, but unfortunately their presence failed to bring DC’s offense to life. In 29 minutes, Benteke had five touches, Peglow fifteen, and Gabriel Pirani—coming on at the same time—had just nine. DC has to find a way to possess the ball in midfield against decent defenses to start scoring reliably (or else they can belatedly abandon this project and go back to long balls to Benteke).

There’s some reason to hope for improvement. First, a full week in training should better integrate the returning players and hopefully they can play more minutes. Second and maybe most importantly, the defense they’re playing this week is…definitely not decent. Indecent?

On the other hand, DC will still be missing Aaron Herrera due to his international duty with Guatemala. Guatemala was knocked out of the Gold Cup after a relatively narrow semifinal loss to the United States, but on Thursday, Troy Lesesne said Herrera would rest this weekend to recover from the tournament grind. He should be ready for next Wednesday’s Open Cup match in Nashville.

They’ll also be missing Gabriel Pirani. That’s not nearly as bad a loss as Herrera seeing as Pirani has only looked good every fifth game or so, but it’s been a while so I was hoping we’d get a few more flashes of potential from him this week. Well, he’ll be fresh for the Open Cup I guess.

The Lineup

Basically, I’m expecting to see the same team as last week, except this time with Benteke and Peglow starting the match. Randall Leal would be the like-for-like replacement for Pirani, I guess, but since he was an unused sub last week I’ll guess we’re going to see Stroud again.

Backup goalkeeper: Kim Joon Hong

Backup defenders: Matti Peltola, Jackson Hopkins, Derek Dodson

Backup attackers: Hosei Kijima, Dominique Badji, Randall Leal, Jacob Murrell

Not selected: Aaron Herrera

The Opposition: Atlanta United

Atlanta had the polar opposite offseason from DC United. Instead of playing moneyball with small transfers and using just one DP, they spent an outrageous amount of money to bring in impact attacking players. Their fans were overjoyed both at the addition of talent like Emmanuel Latte Lath, a guy who scored a lot of goals in the English Championship, and the familiar face of Miguel Almirón coming back from the Premier League.

This was the can't-possibly-miss overhaul of the off-season...except…oops…they missed.

More than halfway through the season, after spending significantly more on the transfer market than the rest of the league…Atlanta has just 17 points. That's one point behind DC United, although they have a game in hand.

Looking back at my Eastern Conference preview before the season, I'm pleased to see I noted some appropriately cautionary notes: Latte Lath's motivation was suspect given his downward transfer, older returnees like Almiron rarely work out, and we've seen Atlanta spend big and come up empty before. Still, while I thought an outcome like this could happen, and boy, I wanted it to happen very badly, I didn’t really expect it.

One preseason suspicion I had (along with many other observers) was that they spent all their money on offense, so their defense would be bad. And so it has been. They've given up 37 goals. Only LA Galaxy and (sigh) DC United have given up more. Their offense is a bit better than DC's, but not much better despite all that money. They've had a few good moments, like a two game span in late May where they beat FC Cincinnati and Orlando City in two straight games. But since then they've lost three straight, all on the road.

In fact, only two of Atlanta's 17 points have come on the road. DC will see a golden opportunity to generate a little momentum and Atlanta will see this as their big chance to get their first road win.

Their most dangerous places offensively are the guys you've probably heard of: Latte Lath, the underperforming DP target forward, leads the team with 6 G+A (five goals and one assist). Winger Saba Lobzhanidze has never impressed me in his games against DC but he's leading the team with 5 assists. No one on DC has more than two, so...fair enough. Aleksei Miranchuk, their DP #10 who looked disappointing last season and has continued to be unimpressive, has two goals and three assists. Miguel Almirón has three goals and one assist. The performance here isn't a flatline, but all of these guys have played a lot more minutes than, say, Christian Benteke and don't have much to show for it.

In goal, Brad Guzan is 40 years old and having a pretty bad shotstopping season, though I wonder how much that's influenced by the poor defense in front of him.

Anyway, for DC United fans probably the most interesting thing about this game is some familiar faces. Centerback Derrick Williams, for example, played a single season in DC before getting chucked off the team along with the bathwater of Rooney's roster. In this past offseason, Atlanta fans seemed to think he was one of their best defenders, which I thought was a very bad sign. Unfortunately, he's been injured and I don't think will play on Saturday.

That leaves the big one, Mateusz Klich, Atlanta's “fourth DP”. He’s famously still occupying one of DC United’s DP slots this season despite DC trading him to Atlanta for a little bit of salary cap relief. I thought Klich, though very good in some narrow ways, held back the team overall and so I said in preseason this might be a trade that both teams win. Alas, what actually happened is that both teams have lost.

DC's defense is still bad despite a younger midfield and its offense is much worse without Klich’s shot creation and set pieces. Meanwhile, he's been completely ineffective for Atlanta and is only starting half their games. Despite playing with a theoretically more talented attacking corps in front of him, his shot-creation numbers have plunged and he has only one assist. Now in fairness, I think Atlanta plays him further back than DC did since they have Miranchuk playing the #10, but that just raises the question: why did they bring him in if that was the plan? It didn’t make sense to me at the time and it still doesn’t.

What I’ll Be Looking For

Offense. Other than the Herrera and Pirani absences, this is really a “if not now, then never” situation given Atlanta’s defensive struggles. After being all-too-briefly encouraged by a few small signs of progress a few weeks ago, I’m back to wondering if Troy Lesesne is really getting the most out of even this roster. An encouraging performance will cool down his seat a bit going into a tough but not unwinnable Open Cup quarterfinal against Nashville.