No, there are shades of grey here. Players were played out of position, benched unexpectedly, and called out by the coach for not providing "effort", whatever Friedel meant when he said that. The one that needed to go was the coach. Everybody else needs to prove themselves again (and I suspect Arena already has a couple of players on double secret probation).
Yeah, I agree. I think there may be somewhat of a rotation in the short-term, trying different players in different places. That is pretty concerning - and I'm sure something Arena is particularly aware of. And, it was the veterans - which made the younger guys stand out (along with Gil) for their effort. I think Anibaba put together consistently high effort, but also lapsed into excessively conservative play (i.e., just booting the ball forward/out of play way too often) - as though he didn't want to get blamed for any mistakes trying to play out of the back(?). Some of them just seem like moody players (Penilla for sure, Caicedo-uno?), others seem to be going %90ish (Bunbury, Agudelo) and others seemed just mind-bogglingly inconsistent/scattered (Castillo, Delemea). I suspect (no evidence here, just intuition fwiw) that Mancienne was a good team player, but struggled to lead/organize a defense from a fractured clubhouse. That's a pretty interesting perspective. Makes some sense.
Well, you almost never see first-half subs, unless it's for an injury. It takes a while to get into the flow of the game, and the conventional wisdom is to give him until halftime. The other point is that a lot of the guys who have been playing under their potential should be given a fresh slate. Playing scared, playing out of position, and sometimes with inconsistent direction don't bring out the best. Arena has watched plenty of video and he surely has an idea on which players are on thin ice. Given the nature of MLS, we may see a few additions this summer or maybe a trade, but I suspect we'll see a lot of changes in the off-season. And amazingly enough, I bet we have more players in training camp than we have roster spots! None of this "we need to save 4 open spots for the one guy we might sign in August" thinking. If Arena brings a new guy in and he has to cut someone, so be it.
This very well be the case. he may just be a worker bee and out of his element being counted on to organize a back line. Throw in the fact that the talent around his is subpar and that is a recipe for giving up 2.58 goals a game