Lowered Expectations: Week Five

Lowered Expectations: Week Five

Welcome to Lowered Expectations, the week five edition! Each week, we go about posting chalkboards and GIFs of the weekend’s five best open play shot attempts that did not quite live up to expectations. We’ll take each one and not only evaluate the results, but also the process that led to these chances.

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Darlington Nagbe And The Very Good Season

A couple of weeks ago, while listening to Major League Soccer Soccer dot com's very own podcast, Extra Time Radio, Alexi Lalas provided some insight to the emergence Darlington Nagbe. The newly-minted US International and always-minted Portland starlet's blossoming can simply be chalked up to "more touches." It's not that I disagree with that synopsis, but I feel that is too simplistic.

Nagbe has been excellent for years. We've seen him time after time change matches with moments that are breathtaking. His biggest problem has always been consistency, going multiple matches without directly being the influence that should be expected from his talent. Of course, "consistency" is just sports fans' code word for "he's not good enough often enough."

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