I watched him quite a bit at ManU. I don't remember seeing him play quite this way regularly. Admittedly, I did not watch him at Everton more than a highlight here or there. He'll have a good amount of time and space since teams will also need to respect Mattock's speed and Arriola, Acosta, Steiber, Asad (whichever 4 of them are on the field with him at any time). Or teams can close him down and double him and get carved up by the others. The HUGE problems is our defense. Fisher made a huge mistake on Saturday. Vancouver just wasn't able to capitalize. They had to triple team Davies quite a few times. He even scored after beating 3 guys...
Fisher is not MLS quality. DCU needs a competent RB and a competent organizing CB stat. Vancouver had one header off the cross bar, another off the post and a third that skipped wide by about 18 inches. We also say Davies abuse 3 defenders to score a goal. The back 4 is poor and the goalkeeping average. It takes more.
Davies has done worse to better as he's a special talent so no shame in him killing you. Kid could break the MLS transfer record. Fisher gotta go though, it wouldn't surprise me if he was close to the team lead in touches on the ball in the offensive half.
I think a healthy DeLeon would basically have been fine (though I wish he'd been converted to FB, which was his natural position all along, years ago; if he had, he might actually have become good eventually). With our other flank players being among the better players on the team, what DeLeon doesn't bring, we don't really need.
This is the point that kills me. It is clear that other teams game plan to force DCU to play the ball to Fisher via their high press. This has been the case for several years with our fullbacks (and Boswell when he was here). Knowing how many touches your fullbacks get, I'd actually try to overspend on those positions yet DCU goes cheap on fullbacks.
Mora actually had more passes attempted in the offense half than Fisher on Saturday. Rooney did, too, in his 35 or so minutes on the field.
Those headers were part organization, but a larger part a HUGE height disadvantage vs. Vancouver. That could continue to be a problem. We have a lot of good attackers who are short. Our outside backs are also short.
Another fullback. Glad Rooney had lots. I like fullbacks getting touches. I just want good players getting them. Over the course of the season, Fisher has a ton of touches.
Given our weakness at RB and LB (frankly the whole back 4), for the life of me I cannot understand why our CM (box to box) and DM have not been drilled in practice to 'show' and make themselves available everytime either of those two have the ball when in the defensive end of the pitch, or near midfield. Give them a simple outlet to allow possession to keep moving and 'ticking' along. It does happen- but not nearly often enough. Alot of the time midfield players are pointing forward and running away...asking for some silly 'over the top' hero through ball...which has a low percentage of completion. Then they are isolated, and left to try and beat their man 1v1 (poor choice), play backwards to the CB (safe but negative), or hoof the ball upfield aimlessly (safe but a panic play). When RB/LB do play backward to the CB... if the CM/DM have not come back to 'show' for them, then the CB has only 3 options: square pass to the other CB (delay tactic), back pass to goalie (safe but negative), or hoof ball upfield (safe but panic play). The back pass to goalie nearly always results in a hoof ball by the goalie. If the CM/DM don't track back and show for the back 4 to receive the ball and start the offense... all the scenarios I described above are nothing but delay options until the inevitable hoof ball occurs upfield- which concedes possession back to the other team. It so frustrating to watch when it happens- you can see it coming 4-5 passes before it occurs. Hopefully Rooney arriving will help improve this, but this explanation above is one example of the bad tactics and coaching DCU has been receiving. The 2nd half of our home game was very encouraging...we were playing simple 1-2 stuff, staying in our triangles, and keeping the ball moving. I'm hopeful that 2nd half 'style' will continue moving forward.
You can almost always tell which team's going to lose by the number of hoof balls the goalie's forced to make. I think the defenders need to have the confidence to thread the pass more. I appreciate Durkin's positioning. The CDs have to trust that the DM's going to turn and take a positive touch. As a DM, I'd rather settle into space behind the opposing forwards so I can open up rather than just make a backpass to the other CD, which is what's likely to happen otherwise. He does a good job mixing it up, too. I'm pretty happy with what I'm seeing from Durkin when we have the ball. The defenders need to put on their jock straps of +5 fortitude and use those passing lanes when they're available. My $.02.
hahaha... yes you are correct! I think there might be a direct correlation to the number of hoofs for the winning team vs. the losing team. Lowest number wins. Like golf. DCU needs to get their top notch analytics staff on this.
So we will line up by letting Rooney distribute the ball. We can close this thread now, question answered.
He's probably a better goalie than Ousted too. One other thing I've noted since Rooney got here is that Mattocks has been pretty horrible, whether Rooney is on the field with him or not. I'm not sure Rooney trusts Mattocks at all. I don't blame him. Mattocks is levels below the other attacking players that play around Rooney. But Mattocks was serviceable in the first few months of the season. Wonder how we can get him back to that production... It seems partially mental for him and partially our playing style that we've grown into with Rooney.