Upon further review, call it too little discipline or too much excitement when Minnesota United struggles to exploit a man advantage.
The Loons have played with an extra man three times this season and haven't won once. In last Sunday's 3-1 home loss to Colorado, the Rapids scored three unanswered goals when they played a man short the final 35-plus minutes after the Loons scored in the eighth minute and then not again.
"This is not something we haven't spoken about," Loons coach Adrian Heath said. "It's a matter of discipline, really. For the right reasons, guys are trying to make things happen. …When the other team goes to 10 men, the area of the field that really hasn't changed is where you think you've got to be playing all the time.
"If they were playing a 5-3-2, they now might go 5-3-1. You've just got more room in different areas and we haven't done a good job managing that."
Defensive midfielder Wil Trapp and center-back Michael Boxall each watched Sunday from afar, Trapp from a Minneapolis hospital room and Boxall up late in Bahrain.
"We lost discipline, especially going forward," Boxall said. "We were in such a hurry to put the game away, we lost our shape and guys maybe we're trying to do too much, going forward too much and we left ourselves exposed. On the other side, maybe we were too aggressive going forward, but too passive going back."
Trapp called his team too excitable last Sunday.
"I think it's a case of a little overexuberance," said Trapp, who didn't play because his second son was born hours before kickoff. "Thinking 'OK, we're up a man and now we're just going to score.' A team like Colorado is great on the counterattack. They almost want you to come out of your shell. For us, it's being a little more patient and understanding."
