Happy birthday, Charlie Davies, who received his first gift a day early when Major League Soccer handed down a $1,000 fine for his penalty kick-earning dive at Real Salt Lake last week.
Twenty-four hours later, Davies and midfielder Dax McCarty are back in the starting lineup for the first time since May 14 as D.C. United (4-5-5, 17 points) seeks some revenge against the Houston Dynamo (4-6-6, 18 points), who got a hat trick from rookie Will Bruin in their 4-1 at Robertson Stadium on April 29. The Dynamo are immediately in front of D.C. in the Eastern Conference standings.
The full D.C. lineup: Hamid; Zayner, White, Kitchen, Woolard; Najar, Simms, McCarty, Pontius; Wolff, Davies.
In a subtle change, McCarty won’t be wearing the captain’s armband – it’s sticking with Josh Wolff.
Meanwhile, Davies has a coordinated celebration planned with Andy Najar should he score.
Hopefully, that’s better than the antics he called up to help secure a result at Real Salt Lake, the same ones that the league punished on Friday.
United players were positive about last week’s 1-1 draw, but the last two times that D.C. has come home from a road trip with points, they’ve ended up having a stinker at RFK Stadium: a 4-0 home loss to New York followed a 3-0 win at Toronto, and a 4-2 loss to San Jose came directly after D.C. had pulled off a win and a tie on the West Coast, at Portland and Los Angeles respectively.
“I think for some reason, I feel like we put a little too much pressure on ourselves to put up points,” United midfielder Clyde Simms said. “We end up chasing the game early on, getting stretched defensively when there’s a lot of time left to play.”
D.C. assistant coach Chad Ashton said his team needs to stay disciplined defensively.
“I think when we’re at home, we feel the need that we have to make the game, we have to continually attack,” Ashton said. “We need to do better with our decision-making, when to attack, when to possess the ball, when to pick and choose our chances and throw educated numbers when we go forward.”
