Jack joins the Pod to give us some insight into USL CBA negotiations from the players’ side. And we discuss who we’d like to see back, and whether we have any rooting interest in the conference finals and USL championship.

There aren’t many words to describe this season that aren’t synonyms of “disappointing” or “frustrating,” but we nevertheless find about an hour’s worth of them.

We’re saving discussion of the product on the field for our season recap. This episode is all about our listeners. To celebrate our 100th full episode, Jon went and talked to many fans about their love of Oakland Roots SC. Enjoy.

Embracing our fate, we all agree there’s no reason to be anything other than optimistic. Why be hurt in advance?

It’s hard to plan for the future, when you don’t really know what’s in the immediate present.

Despite Aaron’s valiant attempts to talk about the recent two matches, Peter and Jon immediately turn their focus to the run-in and next year(?!). Doubts about the quality of the Western Conference are aired. (We do not discuss a certain player’s social media posts because the episode was recorded before we were aware of them.)

La Union causes Tower Bridge Batallion to crumble from the inside. Roots get less than they deserved for their performance against Sacramento. National Republicans develop an odd sense of pride in how scared they are of other people.

We talk about the new signings, and whether things will ever get better.

Peter and Jon make sure to reference their recent vacations within the first 10 minutes. A recent cup loss is mostly ignored. We talk about where we’d like to see improvement, or a potential change to the roster, and agree it is either in attack or defense. But all agree things are looking up.

Things look good! Maybe its an illusion! Who cares?! Also, we discuss Romanian soccer and Alabaman ska.