Agree with the above posters who felt that Femi and Smith were the most welcome and interesting additions to the line-up. Smith seems to have spent some time in the weight room; he seems a lot beefier than I remember him, but still fast. Femi seems to bring everything Bunbury brings on the wing, with more muscle, and better touch. I appreciate that Farrell is getting some love, but I don't think it's enough. I think he has been the best Rev player for the last month. Koffie is getting the credit he deserves, and is as good a D-mid as I have seen in the league this year. Looking at the Opta stats, there are two findings that stood out for me. The first is that we more that 60% of the possession, passed at an 82% completion rate, but had two shots on goal. The second is the image of successful/unsuccessful open play crosses under "distribution". Look at the stat for the Revs, then look at the same stat for Portland, and ask yourself how it is possible that we didn't win. The answer: Who is at the end of these crosses? Perhaps not surprisingly, my view of Rowe's performance differs. I thought that his previous 2-3 games had been below his standard, but that his game against Portland was his best game in some time. He was involved in the best attacking football that the Revs generated, and was pulling his weight defensively. DF, by contrast, got less accomplished, and yet gets a fraction of the stick that Rowe gets. <Spock>Illogical</Spock>.
Farrell? Really? Sure he makes a lot of good plays regularly but this year and the last game of last year, he's made 2 or 3 bad positional mistakes which cost us goals. He's prone to slipping and biting on bait lately. I say this while wearing his jersey to games, so I am a fan. I just think he's had a tough early season.
I'm with you here. I like Farrell, but he does make mistakes. One that stood out Wed was a running slide tackle in the offensive end. He missed badly, Portland started a counterattack and he was completely out of the play. He hustled to get back, but POR already had a shot (thankfully wide) before he got back.
As of today: The Revs are 8th in the league in shots per game: 13.67 They are 14th in shots on goal per game: 4.44 They are tied for last in goals per game: 1.00
Somebody in a previous thread mentioned that the Revs use top secret analytics to develop their team. I wonder how these stats play into that?? And if you take away the first game, we have scored 6 goals in 8 games, for an average of .75 goals a game.
Well, since they are targeted at you, ... yes! I always see ads for whatever I've shopped for recently. They didn't choose to get rid of Mullins. They made a choice to expose him, but that's different in that it involves other factors, such as who is more likely to get drafted, what other options they have for the position, etc. Totally unrelated, but I was in SF for the last week and caught the end of the Warriors game in a sports bar while waiting for the C's game to start. Those young, golden-gate, hipsters act like they invented the game because their team finally put it all together last year. Nothing like the supporters of a team the year after a championship! Well, that's a good news/bad news thing: - good in that we are doing almost everything well, just lacking in one area - bad in that it's probably the hardest thing to solve in the game - scoring! We're in ones of those offensive ruts as a team, where everyone gets tight because we've struggled so much to score. Nothing builds up confidence like scoring, but it's hard to do when you don't have the confidence. We've been a bit unlucky not to score on some of the mish-mashes in front of goal (like Femi's influenced OG). I think it'll take an early goal like that to open up defenses and help us loosen up and play more confidently.
Front-runners are the worst! I read an article about sports merchandise sales and it said that the single biggest day for sales was the day after the World Series ended and people were buying the gear for the team that won. Nothing like going out on a limb!
The revs have at least one analyst on staff but I'm not sure what they are working on in terms of game day performance. It seems like the Bunbury vs Davies stat would be a fairly obvious output that Heaps is either unaware of or willfully ignores. I'm sure Donnie Smith will go back to the bench once Tierney is healthy for whatever reason. Considering the lack of options up top and the high probability a team like NYC or OCFC would want striker depth, let's call it a "misguded" decision to expose him instead of Neumann, depth at the team's strongest area on the field.
Say what you will about Diego, at least he is capable of providing width, making smart penetrating runs and getting on the scoresheet. He combines well with Lee and is one of the most technically gifted players we have. Rowe was taken 3rd overall which -fair or not- puts a certain expectation on him among fans that he would contribute more than he has. In my opinion, he is a bust as judged by where he was taken in the draft and his lack of consistency to-date. For that reason, I have no doubt Spock would find continuing to start him completely illogical!
• Over the last 3 years, Diego has 13 goals and 10 assists, while Rowe has 13 goals and 11 assists. • Since April (I don't have the patience to go back further.) Opta stats says for successful/unsuccessful runs: Rowe 4/10 and Fagundez 2/8. • As far as combining with Nguyen goes, they play different positions - DF is wider and farther forward, KR is deeper and more central. • As far as draft order goes, your right - Some care more than others. Everyone cares more than I do. The two kids selected ahead of Rowe that year were Wenger and Mattocks. After Rowe were Luis Silva, Casey Townsend, Sam Garza, Andrew Jean-Baptiste, and Austin Berry. Are there any on that list you would prefer? Don't answer that!
They did expose Neumann, the one who should have traded places with Mullins on the list was that outside back of ours that we valued so much that he's now playing for Orlando. I'm sure we must have gotten someone at least as good as Mullins in the transaction that sent Alston to Disney World though.
Expansion draft moves in 20/20 foresight and hindsight: 1. Put Diego on the protected list instead of paying allocation to each team to protect him 2. Pay the Diego protection money to protect Mullins and Neumann. I believe that this would have been less than the cost to protect just Diego. If not, pay to protect Mullins and expose Neumann. 3. Expose Alston and his known health/injury/talent issues. The idea that it is much easier to get effective defenders than it is to get effective forwards in MLS was as true then as it is today.
Nice work with the selective stats. The last 3 years - if we include 2016, sure Diego has comparable stats with Rowe. However, since Rowe came in the league in 2012, Diego has 28g, 17a to Rowe's 23g, 24a. Let's keep in mind too Rowe is 4 year older so the expectation is he would be able to step in and contribute.
Yes, absolutely agree. But, we were pretty thin in defense, particularly at outside back at that point. They did beef up the defensive depth considerably, but not until this off-season. I'm pretty sure that if we had more depth at that time, they would have done what you suggested. That's not to say anyone is blameless, just that you have to make these decisions at a certain point in time with the reality that is at that time.
Re: Alston - it turned out to be somewhat advantageous to have kept him, given Barnes went down early last season. OTOH, we might have discovered that Smith was useful earlier.
Did we have more depth, or did we go out an get another guy for depth after losing Mullins? I don't recall the exact timeline, but I'd guess we got Okoli after the expansion draft. I'm sure that instead we could have found another body for depth at Alston's spot, as we did for depth at Mullins' spot.
Part of the reason Smith hasn't played is because he's had a number of injuries that have sidelined him for significant amounts of time. So, 1) he would have had to have been fit - maybe he was at that time, I don't know, and 2) neither he nor Tierney can really play on the right, so Smith doesn't really help with a vacancy at RB - whereas Alston has played both left and right pretty much equally well. Yeah, but ... do you want to rely on "another body" to play in the defense. If "another body" is going to play somewhere, up top is a lot safer.
Another Body is the guy who we are depending on this year to score the bulk of our goals. I hope he can come into form soon, now that the season's about 1/3 over.
No, I don't think we ever depend on one guy to score the bulk of the goals. Sometimes it works out that way, but most of the time (especially when the Revs have been at their best) the goals come from all the attackers, and a few from defenders as well.
Agreed. The right new guy would be a catalyst - destabilizing defenses and opening up scoring opportunities for his teammates.