Silverbacks-Whitecaps thoughts

Jeez, you try to take a day off and then you have "anonymous" making Silverbacks comments in U20 thread. We do cover other things in the soccer world here. I'll ask next time I take some time off, okay?

Atlanta beat league-leading Vancouver 2-0 at the RE/MAX on Saturday. Huge win for the home team, they move into sixth in the league standings.

My thoughts:

• Nice to see Ukah getting on the scoresheet. Neither goal was the result of beautiful build-up play, but Ukah stuck with both and finished them off well. He picked up a botched clearance of a nice Antoniuk header on the first, and ran through another attempted clearance of a Rios through-ball on the second.
  
• Vancouver never really looked that dangerous, although they had a good bit of the possession. Credit given to the Silverbacks defense for making this happen. Putting McManus back into the defensive midfield spot has really helped solidify the team, it's the best move Coach Smith has made all year, the team has won four in a row (including the Cup game against Charlotte) since he made the move.
  
• The Silverbacks are giving away a lot of possession at this point, but the hard work of the players is making up for it.
  
• I was surprised to see Queeley at forward when he came on, but then he was eventually shifted out wide when the team went to a 4-5-1 at the end.
  
• McIntosh gets another clean sheet, three out of the last four for him.
  
• It's decision time now with the line-ups in the Open Cup game tonight against Dallas and the friendly against Monterrey. Rochester is coming to town next Saturday looking for revenge, and they could be facing a very tired team. I'd guess that the starters will see the majority of the time in Dallas and Monterrey could be seeing a lot of the bench players. The schedule starts getting really difficult to manage from here on out.
  

FC Dallas played a friendly in Monterrey against Tigres on Saturday, losing 2-0. Here's the FCD preview of the game tonight. Dallas' excellent official blog says to expect a strong lineup for the Hoops, and that there will be a webstream of the game here.