Roots fans game day is upon us once more! Roots travel to Lexington, Kentucky in beautiful Fayette County to face USL Championship newcomer Lexington S.C. at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, August 24. Lexington started their inaugural USLC season sluggish but have really ramped up the last couple months and sit seventh in the West.
I went with Sturgill Simpson, from Jackson, KY, even though Chris Stapleton is from Lexington. Just felt right.
Around the Western Conference
Tulsa dropped points for the first time in August with a 1-1 draw at Hartford; Phoenix drew 1-1 away at Tampa; Orange County pipped Colorado Springs 1-0 in Eastern Colorado; New Mexico and Vegas drew 2-2, each team scoring one after New mexico went down to 10 men in the 66th minute; El Paso thought they’d gotten the three poitns at home but Monterey Bay equalized at 2-2 in the 94th minute. As we’ll discuss below, Lexington took all the points home from San Antonio, the only goal a 9th minute own goal.
Roots gained ground on Colorado Springs and held steady with basically all of the other lower-half playoff contenders except Lexington. A good result given the opponent, but as Jon said on RootsPod this week, the chances to get three points and build into a playoff spot are expiring.
Roots’ Form
Just another entry in a rivalry that seems to be primarily barnstormers. Roots once again outplayed a rival and dropped points, although given Sacramento’s talent and the frenetic pace of the game, it still felt like a good result. Roots’ midfield was great and the defense mostly solid. The pick of the goals, at least for the Roots, was the second, with Faysal Bettache picking Peter Wilson out at the penalty spot from 40 yards out and Peter Wilson somehow controlling the ball well enough to get a second touch into the far corner past the keeper and defender collapsing on him in the goal mouth. Danny Trejo looked very lively in his 30 minute run-out and if there’s any criticism to offer it’s that at times he and Panos made the same run leaving two men on the ball and no one running into space. The good news about that is that Trejo enters this weekend’s match with literally three times as many days of training with the team as he had before last weekend’s match.
Benny Feilhaber takes home a well-deserved Coach of the Week.
Lexington’s Form
USL Analytics (@uslstat.bsky.social), as far as I can tell the best available source for USL xG for the amount I’m currently willing to pay, gave both teams about 0.8 xG on this match, so 1-0 is about right. Lexington’s opener is just a beautiful header from Nicky Hernandez over the keeper and into his own net. The header came off of a, I’d guess, 30 yard throw in and honestly Richard Sanchez probably saves it except he stumbled, unprompted and uncontested, as he tried to close down at the near post.
An interesting note out of this game is that Jorge Hernandez picked up a straight red in second half stoppage time that had no impact on this game, but means that San Antonio, currently third in the Western Conference, will be missing their best player for Monterey Bay, Detroit City, and New Mexico United. Obviously we don’t want MBFC to benefit at the expense of a team the Roots will struggle to catch, but the other two are matches that really barely affect the Roots except to the extent that San Antonio might collapse. Just a thing to keep an eye on.1
Match Predictions
Bloom
Cross-country travel is hard and the Roots have struggled with it at times. Lexington are in pretty good form. Nevertheless, the Roots are going to blow them out in front of their home crowd. Trejo starts, dominates. 4-1 Oakland.
Jon
I’m with Peter, Trejo starts for me. Can Trejo open up the attack for Wilson? In the midfield, Faysal Bettache looked good, so I’m keeping him in. Opposite of him, I’m bringing back Ali Elmasnaouy.
Roots win, 5-nil.
Aaron
Editor’s Note: Aaron messaged me this week and asked if I could swing by his place and make sure that he’d turned the irrigation on for the garden while he was away. I waited til my kid was in bed and drove over and was surprised to see his car in the driveway and the ground-level window to the basement open. I figured Aaron would want it closed, but on inspection realized it only latched from the inside, and since I knew the lockbox code thought I’d just lower myself in, latch the window, then leave through the front door and lock it on my way out.
Getting down through that window was not in my thinking when I put on flip flops for this errand, but I managed to negotiate my way through and into the basement without turning an ankle. It’s been a few months since I was last down there but, god as my witness, the hole in the floor had gotten bigger, murkier. The basement was dark but the hole an inky black that stood out in the gloom; commanded attention. I don’t know how long I stood there and stared into the hole, hoping I’d see a bottom. That some semblance of sanity could be derived from it. My reverie was shattered by a buzzing—a hot pink razor flip phone lying on a chair in the corner. I pulled myself away from the hole and picked up the phone. 108 unread text messages.
Each read “1-0 Roots.”
- I will forget this before I finish this post. ↩︎