Should the rams bench Goff? He just lost the Super Bowl, his backup has good preseason numbers. Maybe he would do better? Lakers just missed the playoffs. Sure lebron has won a bunch of finals. But he’s also lost what? 3 or 4 now? They should bench him. Next guy up could be better who knows?
I am not "pretending they won't have bad days." If you read what I said, I acknowledge they happen. This is about batting average. Brooks' batting average is not good. Long has not let me down yet. Granted, Long's dog day may come. But Brooks earns his guaranteed "in" by having so few glitches I can't remember any. You know, the way this team used to run. I am not enamored of the unknown. You're the one coming close to arguing that we should do the same thing twice and expect better results, which is definitional insanity. I like some knowns that are different than yours -- Zimmerman and Long are not unknown -- and I think we should keep looking for other options as well. I prefer to describe my stance as that of the Astros when they rebuilt and got rid of everyone but Altuve. Here is my solid foundation to build upon. Now let's work to find stars to put around him. Now, who are those stars? Some I might know, some not. But that doesn't stop the rebuild from taking place. Or you can build your house on the known swamp and watch it sink. Your affection for Robinson as a LB should basically be discrediting. Even Sarachan grasped that problem. Has GB brought him in? Hmmm. Exactly. Subtle would be showing me club video that Long isn't perfect. But you're trying to argue a guy I have watched be repeatedly burned -- I mean hand away games -- is somehow not what I saw with my own two eyes. And since you make this about knowing, you should "know" that if you were paying any attention. Interestingly, your "Robinson" argument underlines the basic flaw in your approach. You didn't look very hard but told yourself this is as good as I can do, and would build the team around a deeply flawed defense. It's not fixed but I am going to stop looking anyway. This is like Bruce Arena in a nutshell. You make fun of experiments and scouting but then stop so early with your own efforts, and settle, as to ensure the team is full of flaws and second rate.
BTW when you're making fun of "well he had like 3 bad games in the past few years you keep harping on," yeah, but if you look at his stats he has maybe played 8 games total in the past 3 calendar years. So he occasionally parachutes in. And then has 3 demonstrable nightmares in those 8 games. Funny but this sounds more like Robinson. The difference being Robinson is new and not living off rep and has to prove himself every day, so poor performances get recorded in the accounting. There are consequences. Brooks is living off the rep so he gets a pass. Far as I am concerned it should be no different for anyone. Players should only be living off rep on a team fresh from the world cup quarters.
https://bulinews.com/news/426/ranking-the-bundesligas-best-goalkeepers-and-centre-backs-of-2018 Someone was suggesting Brooks was an elite B.1 CB or at least top 10. Brooks is not in the top 18 CB in B.1 in the esteem of Kicker. I think this whole argument is club snobs elevating someone who fulfills their aspirations on a pedestal for subjective reasons. In terms of Kicker, he is just another CB plying his trade in Germany, nothing special. As I have previously pointed out, he is the starting CB on a midtable team with midtable goals allowed. 9th place team, 44 GA. This is not Adams at Leipzig, a player with demonstrated defensive knack on a team that has allowed a B.1 leading 22 goals and has his smaller name team in 3rd place. The sooner we can quit confusing the abstract, vicarious wishes of snobs with actual performance the better. Thanks.
Who are the competing CBs who are even close to being a mid table starter giving up mid table goals in B1?
There are always teams winning and losing. Because the team lost the player should go bye bye is over-determined. It was also not my point. It's a straw man. LeBron's shooting percentage is a little off and that could be a warning sign for an ageing player, but broadly speaking, high performance, same PPG, same rebounds, same guy. No, you're wrong there. Jared Goff is more complicated. He had more INTs than TDs in the playoffs. Though his stats are generally good, a team with championship aspirations would have to monitor whether he does fine with a regular schedule but chokes in the playoffs. Maybe that's too hard to understand, the idea that a team already doing well might have to weigh whether it could do a little better. We'll see how Goff does next playoffs, but this year they rode their running game really. Or did you miss the whole first half of the super bowl where no one could score? On Brooks, I went into a lot more detailed analysis than that, goals given up on tape, goals allowed statistically. I didn't say loser = gone. I kind of tried to lay out an explanation for how relying on a particular player might lead to the results. That being said, it is a results business, and teams that are content to plod along with roster continuity generally keep the same results or erode.
Yeah, see this is just big club snobbery in a bow. You're just saying toss out eye tests, cause no one else is a Bundesliga center back. As I have said 20 times on Adams, while generally the overall roster on B.1 is better than MLS, that does not equate to individual players being better. You can take a good player like Adams off MLS and he is just fine in B.1. McKennie was similarly brought up in a MLS academy. So do they get upgraded just for switching leagues? Downgraded for being former MLS? Or do they point out the flaw in your self serving argument. Like I said, the cold numbers favor Zimmerman and Long. While the former's stats may be an artifact of a friendly rookie cap schedule, Long has played tougher opposition. Brooks should be competing with EPB, CCV, Miazga, etc. in a second tier for sub time. The funny thing is Brooks has barely played for us for about a year and a half but gets treated like the incumbent. Oh, but he was the starting back the past few years (not at the end, and that should hardly be a plus anyway). Oh, but he scored in Brazil (you mean in his only sub appearance?). And let's just leave out what the tape shows from when he showed up for England, Colombia, etc. Those are the tough teams. The measure of a player is how he handles St. Vincent.
When you say brooks is a tier 2 player you out yourself as biased. If he were to leave Wolfsburg another b1 team would immediately acquire him. It’s hard to argue with someone as intellectually dishonest as you. You sound like @Excellency with McKennie. You cite the eye test. It’s simple. You watch with goggles. Watch Aaron long and go on a cruisade of his mistakes like you are with Brooks. You won’t. Because it breaks your narrative. There is nobody better. But that’s irrelevant to you Also the competition long faces in nowhere near what brooks faces
you can try and try and try to convince us that our best CB isn’t our best CB... but it’s not happening. Most people already have used the “eye test” and have concluded what’s obvious.super obvious in fact. He has flaws sure, but he’s our best.
Dude, I like a thing or two McKennie does. The slalom run in his first game for the goal was awesome. Thing is, tell me how many things he has done like that since. The only thing I remember him for, for months now, is the ankle sprain. He has not settled into a position for NT and Schalke (who are way down in 15th, desperately struggling, and having problems with filling all their spots) probably plays him everywhere including keeper almost. I like specialists and I am still waiting to see what it is that down deep he contributes. Otherwise we have a fair amount of recent history of Nagbe type players who are solid soccer pros but don't do any particular task exceptionally. So what I want to see is him tidying up his dribbling, completing more passes, winning more balls, maturing into a type of player, a Jermaine Jones, a Reyna, and not so much some two way jack of all trades master of none. If that offends the club snobs to say a B.1 player still needs work, well we have a team full of players who all could use work, whether they are here or abroad. Long is one player and we use 2 CBs. By simple math that I prefer Long and don't like Brooks does not logically mean he has to sit. It is what I think makes sense, but that is different. I think he like a few other club snob favorites is sufficiently entrenched he goes straight in the XI without a synapse working, not enough performance eval, not enough accountability. A starting back cannot hand away every third game with glitches. That simple. He cleans it up or they should find someone else who bats a higher average. I have offered other candidates but if you were being real about it, part of the coach's job is to identify Lovitzes and can them without regard to who will be next up. To make the argument into "but who will replace that frustrating player" is to miss that the first steps are acknowledging the mess and taking it out of the lineup. Until you do that we can't even see what else there is and how it handles big games and then apologists will say "but he plays all our big games who else is there." Circular. A player is not defined by the competition he faces. That by definition is actually the opposing player. If I play against Messi does that make me good? Same dingbat stuff where we should schedule Brazil under Sarachan because that will make us better. Pffft. If that worked then UAE and everyone else who played Brazil and lost would nonetheless become awesome. No, you get better in such circumstances by demonstrating your own value in the encounter. In plain English, it doesn't matter how good of teams he plays, it matters how he plays. The level of competition could drive better play, but could also eat a player alive. In the end it is down to what the experience does to the player, and I don't see some guy turned awesome by the B.1, I see someone people make excuses for still. If it really worked the excuses would be unnecessary. Ergo, the club snobbery on behalf of an average player on an average team is unwarranted. You want someone whose resume radiates "respect me" and it's going to be a player on a leading team who is a regular contributor. Pulisic, Adams. You are trying to water that down and be a blatant B.1 snob by acting like any old rank and file B.1 guy on even a mediocre or bad team deserves the same automatic respect. You go down the pecking order far enough and I cease to believe you are automatically better than EPL, Championship, MLS, etc. I mean, does McKennie automatically start? Wood? Sargent? I don't get why everyone else (including other B.1, including other players I think show much more talent like Sargent) s watched closely, and in competition, benched, left off, but he is special. His club performance is not special. He is not being bought by Bayern or Dortmund. He isn't ranked with the elite. He merely starts for a midtable side with midtable goals allowed. He then comes over for us and glitches. No, this is the same club snob argument trotted out for Yedlin and a series of other players I would say the same basic thing about. If having players scattered around the world inherently made them awesome our recent spread would have assured Russia. Reality is obviously more complicated.
A player that screws up this often is not obviously your best, not if you know what you're watching. And more to the point, buried in the "he has flaws sure" then followed by "start him anyway" is settling and the refusal to consider that other options, if ever given a chance, might have fewer flaws. The numbers at minimum suggest giving others a chance. You're making a virtue of settling and lack of experiment or imagination. You do that often enough with the Bradleys and Yedlins and Zardeses and you will be watching more big game losses because we should already be abundantly acquainted with the limits of their results. This is a scared team with a mix of status quo defensiveness and nostalgia which is odd for not qualifying. Usually a team that misses out and expects better gets a forward looking horizon, takes nothing for granted the next goround. I thought under Sarachan while the coaching and tactics were poor, there was a better grasp where the selection needed to head for long term goals. That many mids and defenders had let us down, and needed to either be pastured or put to competition, and that if the team didn't look different going forward nothing would change. I would buy tearing at your hair at LB but CB is actually a serviceable position with plentiful other options.......EPB, CCV, Parker, Long, Zimmerman. And down deep what I am asking for is rotate the names and see who actually plays well. To me Brooks is their equal until he proves otherwise on a soccer field this cycle. A guy who blows up every few games does not deserve to be treated like Pulisic or Steffen. And those are both players ticketed to EPL or already B.1 so this is not reverse pro MLS snobbery. Il will in fact credit "big deal" players but I expect them to then play like it.
Good posts. I feel like I don't need to post when you are on the case. As a parentheses, here is MLS writer on Nagbe https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019...agbe-earning-frank-de-boers-trust-range-roles The abilities De Boer describes should theoretically fit US men’s national team manager Gregg Berhalter's intricate system, one that relies on keeping the ball in difficult positions to unbalance the opponent. Yet Nagbe has quietly disappeared from the national team over the last year, receiving only one cap from former interim manager Dave Sarachan in 2018, and being left out of Berhalter's first squads this year. I've never understood why the writers can't just leave Nagbe alone as far as Nationals go.
Because he has a unique skilkset for US players that we’ve long craved - ability to maintain possession under intense pressure.
I was thinking the same thing! In addition, JuveChelsea reminds me of that young poster who was the aspiring Stephen A Smith of the US Soccer media - in particular, they were both defenders in college and let us know about it frequently.
It's 2019. Being terse is a must, we're dealing with the ADHD generation and no one can keep an attention span longer than a Tweet. Expect the State of the Union Address to eventually become a series of Tweets.
I always see stuff like this from grumpy old people while young people flock to libraries in higher numbers than any other generation. But I digress. People also call us stuff like "the ADHD generation" forgetting that it was a bunch of misinformed old people misdiagnosing us. and the "participation trophy generation" forgetting that it was grumpy old parents upset there precious child didn't get a trophy. Sorry for the rant.
I'm old. It's appropriate for me to dislike the lot of you. Actually, I'm ADHD as hell. And I keep it short because I rather watch soccer games than type in here in my free time.