Andy Najar

Reed Baker whiting switches sides.

Uh, so Palacios and Yazbek and, uh, Nahar get a rest, get a breather.

The rest of the starting 11 is, is intact.

They get incredibly lucky on one of the most bizarre own goals we have seen.

I thought he was okay, I think, defensively.

he's going to get a lot of flack for the game winning goal and I'm not sure how much blame you can give him specifically for that because he slipped and all through the match I think at least our discord had been talking about just how disastrous the field was and how everybody was slipping and how kind of ridiculous it was that those were the conditions so I don't think you can be consistent and kind of say wow that is a terrible field everybody's slipping and then get mad at Jack Mayer for slipping in the 90th minute when he was had a body on him and kind of just got unlucky I think I'm more concerned about the first goal in that I agree he and will let you were just completely caught out of position and Nashville's midfield was bypassed and they just got absolutely shredded on a counterattack that feels like a much more replicable goal to score against Nashville than a 93rd minute chaos ball into the box.

Well, and, I mean, it makes sense that if you take your best midfielder, maybe your best center back, and you're maybe the best player on the team in Nahar off the pitch, that you're going to suffer.

And, yes, you need good shifts and replacement there.

They trust their defenders to do those passing actions with their defensive midfielders, those two.

And that allows those attacking players, and more specifically Andy Nahar, to move up the field.

So what was happening was Benny and Nico and Luigi and Ojeda, they all dropped back whenever Nashville got the ball pretty deep.

And then with Tiago and the defensive line pushing up, they created a level of compactness that really stymied a lot of what Nashville was trying to do, right? Because they would, it's really beautiful to see, and it's very cool to see in person when you get that bird's eye view of like, They're setting up two triangles and they're deciding and moving based on their own passing movement defensively, like where they think they're going to try to attack, right? It's a very rubber band style offense where they're setting up these things well in advance so that they can release the trigger.

It makes that left side just as dangerous as the right.

You know, the right side was always the threat with Nahar and Espinosa coming up on that side.

But now we have Saad over there and with Reed Baker-Whiting serving the ball up to him.

Those guys are incredible.

That's going to make us more susceptible to counterattacks.

And as you know, with such an incredible back four, they're going to be playing high up on the pitch, try to help out in the offense.

And so, with especially the age on some of our guys like Andy Nahar and Jason Palacios, we're going to be a little bit more susceptible on those counters.

It's going to be up to Schwozke more and more to protect the points that we can get out of these matches.

It's just how the addition of Elias Saad changes what Nashville does in terms of where they can hurt you from the field.

And it's not just him, right? It's Reed Baker-Whiting, it's Andy Nahar, it's even Jason Palacios and Maxwell Edgy.

Because what you have now is goal scorers from different areas, but also different phases of the game.

And...

And then what happens is that this means that nobody's doubling up on anyone because you can't really leave anyone alone.

And oh, by the way, you got those four attackers taken care of.

Well, you have Andy Nahar and Reed Baker Whiting behind them.

And not to mention the center backs all of a sudden making runs or Patrick Kasbach making runs, which he did a lot on Saturday.

And again, Christian Espinoza fell into their lap and they jumped on that.

Andy Najar is 33 years old, spent a bunch of years in MLS.

I think he went down, he went, uh, man, where did he go? He's played in a couple of different countries at this point.

Uh, he played at Anderlecht.

I saw that

He yells at Andy Najar, essentially, "Andy, I need everything you got for two minutes.

Just give me everything you got for two minutes." And Najar, 10 seconds later, goes and scores the game winner.

[laughs]

They trailed 2-1 entering halftime.

And then Reed Baker Whiting and Andy Nahar scored two goals in two minutes to seal the W in a 3-2 fashion over at Columbus.

That's a bit of a rivalry there.

Obviously, Nashville currently leads the supporter shield race now with 49 points.