Love your enthusiasm, but we just played the 3rd worst team in the league, in a meaningless game, at home, and they missed at least 5 shots from inside the 6 yard box. We have no forward and little defence. Our highest paid DP can't score. This team is missing a lot of pieces. Klein and Vagenas still need to be fired.
Yes, the opposition was poor. And we all are familiar with the term "garbage time" goals. Well, this was a "garbage time" game. We could never get it done this year when anything meaningful was on the line. So this decent outing does little to remove the bad taste in my mouth. Having said all that, did my eyes deceive me or did Ciani actually have a decent match?
Ciani made no glaring errors and we gave up no goals so that part was good. The weaknesses in his game showed themselves if anyone wanted to look closely. Twice a player received the ball in the box maybe 3 feet away from him and he reacted to slowly to close them down. Both resulted in point blank free shots on goal that happened to go toward Diop. At the very end of the game he failed to stop a cross on the ground right across the mouth of the goal get by him but the MN players sight was blocked and he whiffed completely on what would have been a 1 foot shot into goal. One other time a ball was sent over the top and Ciani was closest to it by a couple yards but his slowness meant he barely got to the ball first and in his rush he miss-kicked the ball to yield a corner. tldr version: Ciani was ok in this game. But his inability to quickly close down players in the box and his lack of pace were exposed a couple of times but did not prove costly. He made no blatant mental errors but MN didn't put us in many difficult decision situations (almost no real counterattack threats by them). only bottom line that matters: Ciani is clearly too slow at this age to be an effective cb against good MLS teams/forwards. And it's not close. That's my patent-pending opinion at least.
He was better then he has been, but Minn. had a lot of open shots inside the box. Can he lead us to an MLS cup? Is he even close in quality to JVD? I hope he continues to improve and can be that guy, but he's not there yet.
Then by all means fire them. I enjoyed watching the match. I can start to see what Sigi is trying to get the squad to do and can start to see the team executing it. There were moments in the match when the 1-touch passing, movement, and runs were sublime. Jona is a defensive bulldog and Jones still has the athleticism to go east/west and help wide faster and better than any other #6 in the league. As their understanding of each other gets better they could become the best CM pairing in MLS Cianni played very well and his objective ratings from Whoscored and Audi Index supports my eyes. The squad looks very promising to me but i understand you have a different perspective,
Jones can help if he can stay healthy and if he can keep the card count down. The results weren't good this year on either of those scores.
I think it's a fair assessment that there were some errors in defense that better teams probably would have punished. But it's also important that we beat an inferior team at home, which we have struggled to do off-season. To wit, MIN is also above us in the standings. Did we get an answer on why we wore the secondaries? Are the primary shirts "cursed"?
Didn't we wear our whites when we played at Minnesota this year? It might have been a swap with Minnesota, perhaps requested by them at the time.
There were two point blank opportunities for MN in the first half. On the first one a centering cross got deflected slightly by Alessandrini I believe and the ball went over Romney's head right to Finlay who got off an open shot from an angle. Romney is to blame if anyone is but the deflection made the ball hard to judge. The second one Finlay was able to center the ball to a late arriving wide open player (who should have been followed by a midfielder) just inside our box in the middle. Romney could be blamed for allowing the centering pass to get off I guess - I don't remember exactly how Finlay got free. Meanwhile Ciani was marking his man who was in the center and closer to the goal, so doing well so far. But when the late arriving guy received the ball he was about a yard and a half from Ciani. The opponent actually settled the ball with one touch and then took an uncontested shot that Diop saved. A good cb would have stepped toward the guy who received the ball since he was the immediate danger (JVD was great at closing loose players down) but instead Ciani passively took a half step forward then turned his back a bit and watched as the shot was taken. Pure luck that the ball went to Diop who then did a good job of handling it. In the 2nd half Ciani did make one great emergency clearance that saved our butt. And then he mishandled another one to give up a corner. At the very end of the game (stoppage time?) a MN player got free at our endline and passed the ball through Ciani right across the goal mouth. Romney whiffed on it as well and I think that threw off the MN player who just needed to tap the ball into the goal. All three whiffed in the end. I believe Romney is a solid but not great supporting centerback. He needs an anchor like JVD or Omar or some other taller, stronger, quicker cb next to him if we hope to be solid defensively. Ciani isn't that anchor. He is technically decent but is slow both speed wise and reaction wise. He doesn't dominate in the air like JVD or Omar did. In fact Jones was the one most often clearing out high corners in recent games. If you don't buy my arguments about Ciani at least we all have to agree that the Ciani/Romney combo wasn't great despite the scoreline. They allowed a weak team 4 or more point blank shots that just happened to go to our keeper or hit the crossbar.
With Jones you have to look at his history with open eyes and plan for that. He is going to play around 20 matches (maybe slightly more next year because no NT) He is going to pick up an average of a YC every 3 matches so plan for 7.
Ok, just rewatched the first one. My memory got the gist right but need to correct a couple things. The centering ball is deflected but by a MN player, not Alessandrini. The combo of Romney being too loose in his marking (he had motioned for help earlier in the play but that is no excuse) plus the deflection allows the ball to fall to a wide open Finlay who gets off a powerful shot right at Diop's feet. Diop parries the ball right to the feet of Danladi who is completely unmarked because Cole is ball watching the whole time. Romney does a nice recovery rush toward Danladi and we get lucky when he shoots it wide. For this play I would give Romney a C and Cole a D-. Ciani did his job fine on this play. See play below: https://matchcenter.mlssoccer.com/m...y-vs-minnesota-united-fc/details/video/138374
Jones is definitely playing much better after Sigi took over. And he shows bursts of his immense talents during the games. However you can tell that physically he's good for maybe 60 minutes and then he shows his age. As the 2nd half goes on he starts falling down more, being later to tackles, fouling more and so on. Next year he will be even older, slower and more fragile. Going forward Jermaine needs to be a fresh legged sub coming off the bench - not an everyday starter.
I can't agree with that. Here are a few examples after 75 minutes from the match: 78: supporting 30 yd sprint with Lassiter and Gio 80: 20 yd hard sprint right to cover a counter 91: 15 yd dropdown sprint to cover Danladi on a cross from the left side 92: 80 yard sprint to support Mcbean and Romain. If McBean makes a decent pass its a goal. There were a few times in the match that JJ held on to the ball too long and lost it. He does not have to ever do that. He is one of the best one touch passer on the squad. His left-footed pass that sprang Romain for the goal at the end is a great example.
Actually, Jones card accumulation wasn't that different from other 6s and 8s (e .g. Beckerman, Sarvas, Pedro, etc)
He isn't one of the best 1-touch passers on the team, he is THE best 1 touch passer on the team. He probably had 15 perfect 1 touch passes in this game and a lot of them weren't easy, over the top hail-mary's. Some were perfect placement passes through channels right to the feet of a teammate 30 yards away. You are right that he made some long runs at the end of the game. Nice to see. But he also just fell over several times while making challenges, was huffing and puffing and grabbing his knees a couple times, completely whiffed on tackles in the 2nd half and committed a couple yellow card fouls that weren't called. And remember last nights game was against a fairly non-athletic, passive team. If you've watched all of Jones' games for LA this season and don't realize the guy is simultaneously physically gifted and also physically suspect and a long term injury waiting to happen then I guess we can agree to disagree. And you are right he doesn't have to hold onto the ball too long in the middle of the park and as someone else said I like your optimism in your implication that he might change. But he's been making this exact mistake for years now for both club and country and he's done so in some very critical games and situations. So I don't see that particular trait changing. And as he gets older this tendency will get more costly because of his declining quickness. Jones is a classic mixed bag type player. His highs are very impressive and his lows equally depressing. I personally don't want to build a team around such a player. Especially not one turning 36 in three weeks.
Really?? Are you counting both card accumulation and red cards and suspensions? Well, I haven't counted, but it SEEMS like we are always having to accommodate his missing time, some of it for stupid fouls, and he's had multi-game suspensions this year as well.
What multi-game suspension? He has 8 yellows (with the accumulation suspension after 7) and 1 red with 1 yellow turned into a single game suspension by the disciplinary committee. Outside of the latter he has missed the same number of games as Allesandrini for disciplinary reasons. Are you possibly confusing his suspensions with JVD's?
If they were not called how could they be YC fouls? I had to check the stats but neither Jones or Jona were charged with a foul. Diallo had 4 and BJIV 3. Jona and Jones were both 2 of 3 tackles won. There is a lot of stuff in your post that seems very nit-picky and one-sided. Has Jones cost his club and country critical/goals/wins. I am sure he has. Has he created goals/wins for his club/country. I am also sure he has.
When a professional athlete at the highest levels of his chosen game states something along the lines of... "I was the best player on the field many times and everyone saw it" that player needs to back up his talk with positive actions that help the team MUCH MUCH more than hurt it. Purposeful and petulant kicks at opponents are the exact opposite (only one example of MANY) and leave many fans to harshly question this brashness.
No one in their right mind thinks that Jones is someone that the Galaxy need to "build around." However the way he's playing currently he could certainly be used has a stop gap, as long as someone like Husidic is there to back him up. With Jones on the team the #6 position is not currently a position that is in need of immediate replacement (like striker, GK, CB and RB). The best thing Jones has going for him is that he doesn't take up a IR spot. Now those precious spots can go to new acquisitions.
I appreciate your insights and it certainly explains much of the "analysis" I see on this board this season. I wonder the reaction if a player said 'there were guys on the team who did not always care about the outcome. "But I do," ' ?