we need to play danny williams as a legit defensive mid and let him stay in his home, none of thise pseudo right mid stuff. hes looked pretty good as a strict Dmid, anything more its a waste. Zusi im starting to wonder whats the point.....if we want a player like that just bring Feilhaber instead. Kljestan made me a sad panda Bradley and Jones had some good stuff but some pretty lousy stuff as well. Edu looked the best of the bunch. a guy rotting on stokes bench until recently. scary.
?????? That was the best part of the team. They combined for the goal, and obviously Bradley was the US' best player. The midfield subs were pointless. They weren't the types of players or in the types of roles that were going to change the match. We didn't add a dribbler or a speedster or a crosser, etc. We just more or less replaced like for like except for taking out Eddie Johnson, who was the only player of his type. OK, that's mostly a complaint about the coach, but neither Klejstan nor Zusi performed well. EDIT: I think the Bradley bashers are overreacting to his terrible set pieces. I agree, his set pieces were terrible, but he moved the ball well, far, far better than any of his teammates. The set pieces were a big negative, sure, and those plays really stuck out and were memorable, but they don't overshadow his terrific game passing the ball.
People bitching about Bradley, please tell me who was the only guy the last 30 minutes of the game running the train and trying to create an equalizer?
Bradley was better than most but that doesn't mean he wasn't at times very poor by his own standards. I can't recall having seen him make as many poor passes as he did today.
I tell you what the midfield had absolutely no ********ing toughness today. Bunch of soft, weak minded players is what I saw. Every single one of them. Where is the Hejduk, McBride type attitudes you need for these road games?
I could pick apart the midfield until I'm blue in the face. I just don't have the energy or patience and quite franky I'm just too pissed to do so. But I will say the one thing that absolutely drove me insane: the lack of pressure on the ball. Time and time again Honduras would dribble and the midfielders would not put pressure on them. Zero. Every single time Gonzo or Cameron had to step up leaving a gaping hole in the back. It was the same on the wings. Pressure would have eliminated both goals.
When Eddie Johnson is our best midfielder, you know we have issues..... I dont think Bradley did as bad as some of you are saying. He didnt a good game by any stretch, but it wasnt as bad as the others, whihc was...bad...
Two nagging problems from the midfield that are sticking with me hours after the game ended: 1) Defensive responsibilities appeared unclear. Anytime Honduras switched fields, we looked shaky. 2) Far too often, we didn't play a simple ball to keep moving. Periods when we did this, we looked dangerous (or, at least competent.) Far too often, a player would survey an option, take an extra touch or two, and then pass the ball to the original player. This was especially clear on the counter, where we were too slow to strike, even when we had numbers. For individuals: Thought Bradley looked fine, but below his potential. Johnson and Edu had more good than bad. Jones had a fantastic pass and was sub-par for the rest of the match Williams...neutral on his performance (not like Honduras carved us up in the middle of the field) Zusi and Kljestan both had rough games
This. Bradley did suck today, but he did not suck any more than the rest of team. Many here have mentioned issues with MB's set pieces and distribution, but I was more bothered by his failure to pressure the honduran player who chested the ball to the player who scored the bicycle kick goal.
Jones = mediocre. Great pass on the goal. That was about it. In his defense, he isn't a RM. JKs persistence in playing DM/CM types at RM kills out attack. Williams. even worse. So good he got subbed off early. Bradley = awful. AWFUL. If that is our future captain, we are in trouble. Edu was decent when he came in. Zusi and Kljestan didn't create much, but they had plenty of company. Lots of long balls to no one in particular.
I think a lot of the problems were stemming from Williams not passing well and thus we end up with a situation where Williams is supposed to be deep centrally, but we get possession and Bradley drops into the deep role in the middle, then Williams is out of position as he wanders forward to get out of Bradley's way but instead just clogging things further up field. It all results with Bradley too far back to connect defense to offense and our shape all wrong. Looks like poorly defined roles in the midfield.
Bradley was mostly fine with some horrendous moments mixed in. I'd chalk it up to the apparent 299% humidity. Jones was meh. Great ball on the goal, got gassed, and was not as good defensively as he usually is. Williams was abhorrently terrible and I honestly forgot he was on the field until Hudson mentioned his name in like the 32nd minute. Bad Sacha showed up. He killed every attack he was involved in. Zusi just ran around trying hard and did nothing except tank a great ball from Bradley by incompetently settling it onto his hand. Edu was doing much better than Williams, but still not great, and there were a couple times he should have taken a professional foul to stop an attack and let everyone get resettled and get the shape back.
Best i've seen Edu play. Strange as i swear he's rode the bench for 2-3 months minus one game for Bursa.
If we're not going to get into people's grills and instead sit back we need to be very positionally and organizationally disciplined, that was not the case. A prime example being the goal Hon had called back where the midfield was out to sea. Passing stats: Williams was 18/21 Jones was 19/29 Edu was 19/20 Bradley was 54/65 Williams was only notable for his absence. Jones had one moment of quality otherwise there was no way you could convince me this was a Champions League player, he lost the ball more than any other player on the team. Good lord do we need Holden to get back to form because JK is not going to change the makeup of his 3 man CM without his hand being forced and Holden's superior attacking skills will sneak into the mix on the strength of his workrate and pickpocketing. Subbing in Mo brought in some energy and he did well. I thought Mike was disappointing in the first half but really tried to impose himself in the second. Sacha had 13 successful passes and 7 turnovers, Zusi provided zero spark. Both were essentially wastes of space.
Everyone was pretty bad, but he was the only guy out there who looked to try and win it towards the end.
Lord that's horrible. He should have a 85+% completion rate, making only simple passes. Anything else is not his game.
How could three central midfielders playing so close together fail to find each other all game? Between Jones, Bradley, and Williams, not one of them was working to open up for each other or provide outlets for quick touches. Whenever one received the ball, the other two just kind of put their heads down and slowly jogged up field... Williams was invisible but it seemed to me like he was assigned to man marking Espinoza and taking him out of the game as much as possible, rather than playing the normal clean up role that you'd expect from that position.
This. This. This. People are really piling on the defense after this match as shown by about three times more comments in that thread than this one. However, I found myself more shocked by a our midfield performance than the backline. We all know our backline is weak, but midfield is supposedly our strength. When midfielders do not step up defensively and fail to string at least a few passes together to give the backline a chance to breathe and reorganize during the 90 degree heat, even a good defense is going to be undersiege. When a defense is mediocre like ours, then they will concede goals if exposed to such pressure without any help from midfield. None of our midfielders seemed to have any idea what their roles were. It had a bit of the look of a random group of strangers playing a pick up game on an afternoon. Embarrassing.
What people gloss over is that defensive shape is often determined by what other responsibilities the backline has to assume. When the midfield is not plugging up gaps or is failing to step up that repsonsibility falls on the defenders to do so. They have to but in doing so the defensive shape is thrown out of whack. It can leave gaping holes especially if communication is broken. To the naked eye one is going to blame the defenders but the reality is that defending starts from the front and trickles down. The domino effect is in play once that defensive line is broken in the midfield and/or up top. That's not to say the defenders weren't poor -- they were -- but they were thrown extra responsibilities which futher impacts their play. It has become a trend with our midfield to not pressure. I hope that's not a directive from JK. People also don't understand pressure. It doesn't mean be right up in someone's grill where all they have to do is make a slight move and you are toast. It can be as simple as taking two, three steps forward where you cut off movement or a pass. You make them revert. But our midfielders give way too much space and just invite the passing. I can't stand that. It drives me insane. That's JK's fault. While I can blame the players to some extent it is increasing difficult to know your role when there are three central midfielders occupying one space. It's their mindset to gravitate towards the middle and assume a similar role they play club wise. they can't provide the width because they aren't use to seeing it from that perspective. Williams, Bradley, and jones fought each other for space. It led to turnover after turnover.