Curtin is #1 for me. It's too bad it won't happen until the playoffs are too far out of reach. I think we actually have some half decent pieces.
True, but these are some of the better pieces that don't fit together that we've had. We can play better than we did tonight.
I think it might have been KK that had an article about how the Gooch acquisition would have been good for the Union if he wasn't a regular starter playing 90 every game. Which is exactly what's happening.
So I take that to mean you understand them then. Fantastic! Explain the tactics to me.......because from the vantage point of this novice it looked to all the world like he wanted to come out and play the exact same way he played against Toronto but, Kreis- being a real MLS coach with a week off-did something unexpected and our guy proceeded to shit his pants for 48 minutes.
I don't have a great knowledge of tactics but I do know this: you can't say "we want to be a posession team and control the play" and then have Blake and the fullbacks serve up long ball after long ball. If you're playing long balls but then have Sapong all alone up top, then what do you expect is going to happen? Disjointed play, no posession, and no offense. He needs to find a different formation or lineup that plays to the players strengths and has them mesh better than what he's rolling out each week right now.
You can't be a possession team with this roster. Hence my surprise that he didn't fight fire with fire from the jump. He elected to sit back and absorb with a team ill suited to do that. He looked like he was playing for a Vancouver result again. When they conceded, Orlando turned off the press and got out of what gave them the lead and control. I hate when teams do that...... Union took advantage, but when they got Larin-gytis yet again, Kreis parked the bus because he knows Philly sans Barnetta doesn't have a creative bone in their body. They switched off late in extras, and the Union almost stole another point, but ill sinho proved a year ago when he shoots he has no idea where the ball is headed, and Bendik suffocated Bedoya late. What interested me in the first half was how effective Orlando's press was in absolutely exposing and discombobulating Rosenberry and Alves. They couldn't pass a ball 2 feet with turning it over in horrible positions. Kreis should have stuck with that all game.
Same shit, different year. We attack the flanks and whip a hopeful cross. Over and over and over. I'm so ********in sick of being a second rate team.
The silver lining is that out of a possible 9 points to drop in the first three matches the Union only dropped 7.
Isn't 20 y/o Peter Crouch twin Elliot our back-up center back? Didn't he jump Tribbett? Don't see him out there unless Gooch's leg is pointing in the wrong direction. Gooch and Richie it will be until Yaro is back.
My remembering of the game yesterday: Orlando launches a ball behind our defense. Our defense barely copes and then launches the ball to their defense. Rinse and repeat. Or, tl;dr version: what everyone above me said.
What can we expect from a team that lost its best and most skillful midfielders and never truly replaced them? They barely made the playoffs by backing their way in, now they are continuing the trend of play from last year. How many balls were played into the feet of Sapong? ............ Why does every team but the Union have guys in the central midfield with an appropriate level of skill to create chances through the middle? Orlando, a team many picked to be bottom dwellers, can achieve it without their star DP available. It's a long recurring problem this franchise has more years than not. Bedoya is not playing in his natural role, and he needs a supporting cast to be effective. I think his play is most negatively impacted by Barnetta's departure. I don't care who is coaching, if you don't have the necessary quality on the pitch, you won't get too many results.
We have some pieces, they just don't quite fit together. Bedoya should be an 8 on this team over Jones (though I like the youngster). Our main problem is that we lack a #10. Alberg is the embodiment of sunk cost fallacy. Ernie values technique over athleticism, which is fine to a point. I think we have our best starting XI on the field, we are just lacking a CB and a playmaker. Until we have them, we are at best a 1 win playoff team.
It's not like we were sold a bill of goods, unlike other "high profile" defenders who have donned a Union shirt. Sure, before the Yaro shoulder surgery news broke ...
I think the frustrating part is there should have the ability to perform better... not that they have the potential to be world beaters - they are probably still "meh" when they are performing at the level we'd expect, but now it's clear they are definitely under performing, and considering the team would probably need to do the opposite and over-achieve to accomplish anything this year, the writing already is on the wall....
I think there's a narrative that we "overperformed" last year and made the playoffs out there. As @derek750 keeps us abreast of Curtin's PPG shows, we really just "performed". Our 0.67 of 2 points from 3 matches means we're due to bounce back with a W (PFC at home?). This is a team that will hit between 42-45 points. It may be good enough for 6th. Last season 6th was 42 (as was 7th), year before it was 49. What ATL's small sample size has proved, again, if you spend big $ on attackers, you can grab points in this league. The Union, unfortunately, have the bulk of their salary money in 2 midfielders of arguable effectiveness. The formula in MLS seems pretty simple, get a couple of attacking pieces with enough talent to threaten, cheap but sturdy US defenders and keepers, and you can compete. We signed a marketing piece in Bedoya (and previously Edu and even more previously Adu) without real consideration into fit and formation. This is the result. We're going to win some games, but mostly because there are other crap teams, not through any real design on our part. This is what lower to mid table feels like. Welcome to Bournemouth. Stay for the crumpets.
I just want to parse these points out to discuss. I doubt many are going to agree on the "who/where" portion of the program........ Time to kill what I consider some false narratives: We were playing this formation before Stewart was ever hired. Curtin was, in effect, running things beforehand- and imo, during the transition. Earnie didn't demand institutional compliance......he ratified it. It has been discussed artfully by others that in MLS at least, locking a club into a specific identity before having all the pieces in place runs the risk of terminal illness. Our main problem, esteemed poster Dulliwhig, is that from pillar to post-owner to waterboy-and everyone in between we lack "big picture" people. A lesson a Federal Judge taught me a long time ago. They still get so caught up in the day to day function of the operation that the goals they regard as so clearly viewable end up as nothing but a mirage. It's all about getting from A-Z( what I did there) without ever stopping long enough to consider the necessary intermediate steps along the way. If increasing depth was the next step in the plan, being flexible enough to adjust tactics and formations until you have a working template should have been rudimentary for them. Instead......they gave us Tampa St.Pete v. 3.0. I guess they didn't get promoted in badge school..... A club with a long-range view engenders some sympathy by adding a target striker in the offseason, not a forward. When everybody and their mother knows they need a 6.....they don't respond by bringing in a slow 8/10. When they know they haven't got CB right in an age.......they don't sing hosannas because an aging star fell in their laps. They get their HG CB up to speed and ready as fast as they can-because that's a move they can make to further the future that's available to them to make. Every acquisition this club seemingly makes screams of hand-me down. The fact that their new superstar doesn't really have a position in their grand scheme speaks of incompetence-not a temporary conundrum. Every move made or not reeks of favoritism,and always has. The stench of this club never lifts until real commitment arrives....if it ever does. It has been both a joy and a sadness for me to view the league's progress over the first 3 weeks. Away from Union concerns, a good deal of quality and stellar play is being injected at many venues. I will speak to this in another thread before DC. In the myopic, they-and we-are missing MLS literally running away from us-and preparing shortly to lap..........