We need an offensive coach bad. When you put a former GK and former GK coach into the head coach role without that, you're getting what you paid for...
I think UP did on the other board thread, perhaps a bit too much. Maybe he needs some valium or prozac now.
I like GoRSL's point about the need for offensive experience on the staff (outside of Andy?). I would be interested to hear what Waibel (dibs on Why Bail? forum thread name in years to come) is saying behind closed doors.
You know nothing!! Read what you write "They gave the money to OLave. " if they would of kept Nat they didn't need Olave. Yes the expansion draft doesn't give the team anything if they are taken!, Well the FO Garth decided that ,can't keep the ball at his feet , Garcia and get another old player Philips were better than keeping Ned and Chris.!!, No one in this league can understand why this team were break it up with many years of making the playoffs and almost two mls cups. The league DID not figure out the diamond when Real got to the Playoff for so many years! Did the FO break it up so maybe this team with all these young players will be great in five years?. Why give up what Real had for Maybe they will be good. But seeing This team with all these young players, they will not ever amount to anything and the owner will not spend money. !!! Real has kept the games close because of the defense but they can't keep,it up without some offense and the offense we have except Luke, and Javier are bench players at best. We gave up a good system and good players for this.
Whoa. Slow down there buddy. Step away from the keyboard and take a deep breath. You seem to have worked yourself up pretty good, so maybe you need to take a break from the forum for a while. Come back when you're calm and collected so you don't post nonsense like "... Javier are bench players at best." If Javi is a bench player in your mind, then I question anything else that is going on in there.
LMAO Javi a bench player? He's been our best player this season so far hands down. We couldn't protect Nat, so the next best option was to actually get cash for him, which shifted over to Olave. I'd say that's a pretty break even deal overall. Phillips is far more dangerous on offense than Wingert ever was, while so far it doesn't look like a big drop off defensively. Good move there IMO. The only player you could make a case for is Ned, who would likely look good in this setup. And sorry, the diamond was figured out by the good teams. Of course we were beating bad and middle of the pack teams. Where we fell apart, was against good teams. Teams like Seattle and LA, who were killing the diamond. So yes, we got to the playoffs, then promptly looked like crap in the playoffs because the better teams knew how to counter it. I'd love if you'd actually come forth with some kind of argument and reasoning behind it beyond just spouting doom and gloom about 'the vets'. I still find it hilarious that you're calling Mulholland and Javi 'bench players at best' when last year Mulholland was incredibly solid, and so was Javi.
While I think Phills is completly missing the boat, he didn't say Mulholland and Javi are bench players. He said everyone but them are.
Fair enough. I missed that part in the crazy rant. I guess I'm more impressed that he left KB/Rimando out of that then.
Which is why I say formation is only secondary. You look at your players and see how and where they can fit to be most effective and build your formation around them. However, if the players simply aren't very good it doesn't matter which formation you deploy they just aren't going to get the job done. Right now I feel RSL is a team that just isn't going to get the job done because the players we have aren't good enough.
The real tragedy is the coaching talent is not up to the challenge. JC has a very long, long way to go to being a coach that can get the most out of good players let alone getting players to play above presumed talent levels. Maybe he figures it out? I'm not convinced from the passion in the play of RSL that he gets it just yet. Time will QUICKLY tell
I tend to agree with this, and that the "diamond was figured out" line is largely a myth. Personnel matters, and maybe 4-3-3 is a better fit for this group. But consider that perhaps the reason that the better teams beat RSL in the playoffs is because...they were better teams. Not necessarily that they had cracked a soccer code.
There is no single problem and also no single remedy. It's a combination of a lot of things. The formation is part of it, to say it isn't is to ignore tactics and how they can help a worse team on paper win a game (see Torino v Juve this weekend) The quality of the players is the top most. I won't argue with you there. It doesn't matter how savvy your tactics are, without quality players it ain't going to happen. But RSL doesn't have a shit roster. At least nobody had honestly thought that prior to this last week. Remember that we had our captain on the field this last game. We had the golden child in Gil. Yes, he actually played. You can't go "well RSL doesn't have the talent". Very few people would claim that RSL didn't have good skillful players. Blaming player talent also tends to be a knee jerk reaction that covers the ass of the manager. This team isn't even playing at a playoff level as of late. You can't tell me these guys went from being just outside the SS race to being out of the playoff hunt.
One of the things that made me expect the worst last weekend was chemistry--how often does that particular group of guys train as a full team? I know they attend the same training sessions, but don't we usually play the expected 11 together in training scrimmages? Correct me if I'm wrong, please. I just got the feeling that these guys didn't really know how to read each other well.
I very well can and will. Depending on context, it's entirely appropriate. The context was formation and success in playoffs. RSL doesn't have the talent to consistently compete for trophies. LA and Seattle had (and have) more talent than RSL. Our guys would have had an uphill battle in the playoffs last season regardless of formation. To lean on the argument that some teams just "figured out" RSL's tactics seems to brush aside the fact that those teams were just better. Yes, tactics are an important part of any game, but am I to believe that coaches around the league took several years to "figure out" a 4-4-2 diamond? As far as the last two games, while they certainly look worse in the win/loss column, I don't feel there was a large drop off from the previous five games in terms of level of play. To be frank, they probably pulled off some undeserved results in those first few games, and yes things completely fell apart in the game last weekend, but overall I've seen mediocre play from a mediocre team. Not the best team in the league, not the worst, but a team filled with average MLS talent, searching for an identity, which will probably find itself battling for a playoff spot at the end of the season. They are neither overperforming nor underperforming, especially when the seven games are taken together as a whole.
By the way, I don't feel that anything needs to change. That includes formations, coaches, players... I think this is very much a "sorting out" season where a lot of questions will be answered. We'll identify some duds and hopefully some gems. Nothing really jumps out as a red flag right now. Perhaps I'm settling for less than I should, but this was never going to be a season where I'd be excited about a trophy hunt, but I am excited about player development and new tactical approaches. Enjoy the ride...
I would buy this if half the lineup wasn't regulars. The problem was 8 of the 11 regularly train together. One of those other three was the gk - that doesn't effect chemistry to get your ass handed to you 4-0. Especially when JeffA was the only good player. Two guys can't complete destroy chemistry. They can make it hard, sure, but not that kind of bad.
EXACTLY. Jesus, listening to On-frame and they are trotting out the same excuse about missing all these "starters" and it's just bullshit. These guys who started have played A LOT together, 7 of them I would consider outright veterans. And they're talking about how these guys don't have experience in high pressure situations and because they're missing so many "starters" they just didn't know how to react when down a goal or 2. What. The. ********. That is complete BS, these are guys who have played a substantial amount of time together, competed in the highest levels of this sport in this country. That's just a crap excuse, they folded like a cheap tent and looked like a bunch of damn amateurs after half time. I don't expect us to walk into NE and win when we travel only 16 guys, but ******** man, at least play like professionals.
I completely agree with @bordelais7 , and had been thinking the same thing. It doesn't make sense that teams suddenly "figured out the diamond," and I think that gets the purpose of a formation all wrong. The formation and tactics matter because it gets the best out of your current team, not because it's going to fool the other team. If it was all about not letting the other team figure you out, we would see teams switching formations all the time - similar to plays in football (where the name of the game is deception). In soccer, a good formation with good players is effective regardless of how the opponent counters it. I would hope that every coach in MLS knows the best way to counter any common permutation of a 4-4-2, 4-3-3, and 4-5-1, and has known that for years. RSL wasn't effective in 2010 because other teams didn't know how to defend the diamond; we were effective because we were very good at making the diamond work despite other team's best defenses against it. The reason we switched from the diamond is because Cassar felt like it took advantage of our player's skills better, not because the diamond was figured out. I'm excited to see that come together, despite the growing pains along the way.
Case in point: Beckerman was surprisingly terrible in this game. By minute 60 he looked like he just didn't care much, which is just unacceptable. Unless he's injured, which I thought the announcers mentioned?? That being said, I don't buy the argument that if you have 8 of 11 players being regulars then your team isn't vastly inferior. The Challenger had 99.99% of its parts function perfectly, and the whole thing failed because the O-rings froze. Soccer is similar: you need all of the pieces to work or else things can come apart very quickly. I saw a lot of players stop trusting each other in the second half (not staying in position, not daring to pass into tight spaces, etc.), and that could easily be due to only 2-3 less-experienced players.
Have you guys not watched us play in the diamond over the last year+? We struggled, mightily, against some of the best teams because they knew that high press in the midfield lead to soft turnovers and quick cross-field switches opened up our defense like a cheap can of tuna. And if you don't have the athletes to do the high press/quick counter then you just pack it in and let us pass it around the back for 90 minutes. The formula was out, teams like KC, LA, Seattle, FCD, the better teams in the league, all beat us using this formula. We struggled throughout the year last year to break down teams who packed it in and then when we faced teams who had fast and athletic midfielders we had trouble with the high press. This wasn't some sudden realization by other teams either, A LOT has been made of RSL's diamond over the last 3+ years, the "pretty" soccer stuck in some teams craw (cough, benny, cough cough). Really the "figuring out the diamond" started with KC a few years back, their high press and physical nature in the midfield was the key.
I want to emphasize the bolded. The diamond worked for RSL for a long time. We fell short in finals, but it was damn effective. The issue was teams started really exploiting it the last few years. We still had the talent and acumen to make it work, but it's effectiveness was wearing out. The biggest problem with the diamond was that it became static. It didn't have any sort of evolution. In fact, it devolved with the loss of wing backs. When we say teams "figured it out" that has as much to do with the other team knowing where to attack as us not having the creativity to counter their counter. I think ultimately we're all saying the same thing here but shaving our cats differently. I like mine to be Brazilian, personally.
Did we struggle against the best teams because of the diamond? Or did we struggle against the best teams because they were the best teams? If the diamond was suddenly "figured out" I think we would have struggled against most teams, rather than just the teams everyone struggles against. It might surprise you to know that our record against the teams you've named is largely unchanged since 2009 with the team winning the series being the team who has the more home games in that particular year. The only record you can say changed dramatically was against KC, against whom we were dominant until they re-branded, took soccer a bit more serious, and picked up better players. I simply don't believe that the teams who have been dominating everyone the past several years are also the ones who "figured out the diamond." No, they've just been better than everyone, RSL included. Why have they been better you ask? Because they are willing to spend the money. I don't mean just on players. Top to bottom they are the heaviest spenders. That includes GMs and coaches too. I remember reading a twitter update from RSL after this game saying, "Don't forget New England was on an "x" game losing streak too last season before making MLS Cup Final." That's true, but guess what changed that? They brought in JJ who completely turned them around. NE struggled at the beginning of this season, and now have rounded into shape. What took them so long you ask? You guessed it, an injured JJ returned. The truth is that the age of the DP is here. Toronto is becoming the anomaly and the teams willing to spend are breaking from the pack. If you want to be a consistent winner you have to pay for it. RSL isn't by any means a bad team, but comparatively speaking they are only a decent team hoping for a more than decent run.