Analysis: ‘Easy giveaways and unforced errors’ leave Loons settling for 0-0 draw

It’s probably going to be a rough video session for Minnesota United as they review Wednesday night’s 0-0 draw with the Vancouver Whitecaps, and the underlying numbers don’t look any better for the Loons.

But “no goals allowed” and “a point on the road against the league’s best team” ought to take some sting out of the postmortem.

“I have said to the players at the end that if you’re coming to a place like this at the moment and you’re not going to win, don’t lose and don’t concede,” said manager Eric Ramsay. “The way in which we saw the game out, the willingness, the discipline, energy, fight, all the words that characterize this team, you saw that.”

Defensively, Minnesota was fine. The Loons allowed 19 shots, according to the Opta data at fbref.com, but none was a particularly good chance — and the Loons blocked six of those attempts.

Attacking, though, was a struggle. Minnesota took only four shots and got only one on target, and the one on target was extremely tame. The passing numbers don’t look good, either; according to analyst Sebastian Bush on Bluesky, Minnesota completed just 17 passes, an almost impossibly low number, in the attacking third of the field.

Ramsay called it a “shirking of responsibility” when it came to the passing, especially in the middle third of the field. “We played easy passes down the line, that you can almost guarantee you’re going to get intercepted, or put the player that receives the ball in a really tricky position,” he said.

It was those “easy giveaways and unforced errors,” in the manager’s words, that torpedoed Minnesota’s performance. Ramsay called it “poor,” captain Michael Boxall referred to it as “flat” and “disappointing.”

“That was, I suppose, our best in one sense — difficult to beat, hard to break down, very well-organized, disciplined, aggressive," Ramsay said, “but, at our worst in another.”

Vancouver’s stadium, once an air-supported dome like the Metrodome, got a big renovation a decade ago. The roof was replaced with a retractable one, giving the chance for the sun to shine in.

The playing surface, though, got plenty of shade thrown at it, just from the visiting team.

“Vancouver is always a difficult place to play,” said Boxall. “I mean, it’s probably one of the worst turfs in the league.”

“It’s a very difficult pitch to play on, and when you’re not in the habit of playing on that type of pitch, it does take its toll,” said Ramsay. “Even relative to turf pitches, it doesn’t play well.”

The manager stressed that he wasn’t making excuses, saying, “I’m not going to make excuses on behalf of the players here, because number one, they wouldn’t want me to.” And it certainly wasn’t the surface that kept playing passes to areas without a teammate.

It is, however, representative of the challenges of playing on the road in MLS. Minnesota makes 17 road trips a year, and probably half of them have some kind of extra challenge. Vancouver, Seattle and Portland have artificial turf. The three Texas teams have ridiculous heat and humidity. Salt Lake City and Colorado are in the mountains. And that’s just yearly trips within the Western Conference; the East has three turf fields and Southeastern heat, as well.

That’s not to mention the travel distances. A website that tracks flight miles for England’s Premier League shared its final rankings of flight miles for the season on Wednesday. Minnesota will fly 2,961 miles on its current road trip, to Vancouver and Seattle and back, which would have put them fourth in the Premier League rankings for an entire season.

Turf, heat, altitude, travel, whatever — it’s the ultimate “it is what it is” of playing in MLS. In a way, it’s what makes the league special; there are so many other things, beyond just the quality of a team, that go into winning matches in North America.

All-Star voting for fans is now open, and the Loons have chosen their candidates to push.

There’s goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair, now with eight clean sheets on the year. Strikers Tani Oluwaseyi and Kelvin Yeboah are both in the top 20 in the league for non-penalty expected goals, and Joaquín Pereyra is tied for fourth in assists.

And then there’s Boxall, who might be the only one who’s pushing back.

“I want zero extra attention,” he said.

Vote for Boxall if you want; he’s having an extremely solid season, at age 36. I just wouldn’t recommend telling him about it, if you do.

“Honestly, midseason awards, it’s not kind of why we play this game,” he said. “You want to be up for the awards at the end of the season. So we just need to keep pushing and make sure we’re improving.”