Game two on the season, first game at home, and our best chance for a win in our first four games. Here we go . . .
Rain forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with the possibility of snow on Friday. I wonder how the pitch will be. Anyway, RSL wins 4-0 Hat trick by our new striker and one by Baird.
Year of the GOAT, game 2. RSL with a win. Vancouver was in a high scoring affair in week 1. There will be goals scored in this one.
This game should be really interesting to see player selection. Johnson looked like he could go more than 30 in the last game, but I'm not sure who you take off the pitch. Do we roll out with the Luiz/KB yellow card show again? Petke raved about his ability to have multiple looks from this team, does that change at home vs away? Is that just opponent based? Is it a lie? Honestly, I think we'll see the exact same starting XI and tactics. I don't think it's necessarily the wrong approach, but I am curious to see when this supposed "flexibility" of the roster/tactics actually happens.
My biggest worry is that we're in a Johnson or Baird situation, but I totally want Baird on the field. And then Saucedo - the guy with the best preseason production - is probably third off the bench on offense.
I agree that we see the same starting line up. I also don't think that at this point in the season it is the wrong lineup. I do think it is the safe lineup. I think there could be an argument made for Beltran starting over Lennon, but I don't think that will happen here. I've also been thinking about who comes off the pitch to make room for Johnson (assuming he is 90 minutes ready). My latest idea looks like this: Johnson Baird Kreilach Sava Luiz Rusnak Herrera Onuoha Silva Lennon Rimando Obviously the big question with this lineup is how Rusnak would look as a number 8. I don't think anyone would say that he has the ball winning or play disruption ability of KB (even at this stage of his career) but I do think is has the ability to keep people in front of him and KB frankly doesn't. Obviously if I were to roll this out I would have no alternating of who pushed forward from the CMs like we saw with Luiz and KB. Luiz would always stay home and Rusnak would always push up. One thing that it would do is put the ball on the foot of our best playmaker more, so there is that.
Beltran looked bad in the preseason game I watched him. A noticeable step slower and just wasn't as solid on the ball. Expecting him to be the same player after the injury he had, especially at his age, is a tall order. Honestly, I don't think we'll ever seen Tony Beltran at the level he was again. I hope I'm wrong
that would play like a 4-1-4-1. I know you're marking baird as an 8, but he has shown he wants to go forward. Javi played an 8 better than he does. Luiz could maybe do it, too. I was impressed with his movement and think it's something worth trying. The scare is if it doesn't work, we're exposing our CB's to a lot of 1v1s and that is not what our group is good at
Just to echo what @15 to 32 is saying above, the problem we have is that we want to get both Kreilach and Rusnak on the field at the same time, but they play close to the same position. Thus, we would have to sacrifice a CDM (Beckerman) and move to a 4-1-4-1, with Kreilach and Rusnak as dual CAMs. That would be great if we were sure that Luiz could handle the full CDM responsibilities, but my issue is that I don't trust our CBs without two CDMs in front of them. We don't have Borchers' intelligence or Olave's recovery speed to handle that. This may be the "deepest RSL in history," but the problem is that we have too much depth at some positions, and not enough at others. Specifically, too many CAMs and Wingers, and not enough CDMs and CBs (or, at least not good enough). What do we do? Sell Plata, and get Borchers/Olave 2.0. That's the only way I can see to make this team balanced again.
Would it work to play a different formation with Baird's position having much more defensive responsibility? I personally don't like that because I'd like to see all of Rusnak, Kreilach, Johnson, Sava, and Baird on the field together.
Does Rusnak push forward because that is how he plays or is that how he has been asked to play? I get that we are splitting hairs here but it seems like we want him to push up as much as possible to kind of fill the second striker role. I'm not sure if he would do that playing as an 8. I think it would take time but I think we could eventually get the balance right with Rusnak as an 8. Sometimes he would interchange with Kreilach at 10. He would push up less when the wingers are more advanced. And so on and so forth. I'm not sure this is the right game to try it, but I would like them to try it at some point. Actually I take that back. I do think this is the right game to try it. It is early in the season, we are at home, and Vancouver looks to be a weak side.
Sounds about right. I think in a way Rusnak could swing a #8 role. However, I think his greatest asset is his finishing ability and he would get fewer chances in that role. But the real disadvantage of this is it takes away Luiz's greatest strength. He is a quintessential #8 and covers alot of ground on the park, and gets forward quickly.
Agreed. At the same time this team desperately needs a play maker to connect the midfield with the front. Rusnak should be that guy, but Petke needs to position him so that he gets more touches than he has been getting.
I can see your point. The question is while it is a minus for Luiz and Rusnak would it be a net positive for the team? As I said before, I'd like to try it out. If it isn't disastrous I wouldn't mind seeing it when we want to be more aggressive, ie at home, and seeing KB in Johnson out when we want to be more conservative, ie on the road. If that were the trend throughout the season I think it would do KB a world of good.
I was trying to think of something like this as well. The thing that strikes me is that we have Mulholland who actually can play the #8 role and is pretty good at it (in my opinion...I know others disagree). I can't talk myself into switching him in for Baird, though, even though I really like Luke. We could put in Luke for KB (I would be really happy to see Petke try this), but it doesn't solve the main problem of getting Kreilach, Rusnak, Johnson, Baird, and Sava on the field at the same time.
Just clarifying, is there a need to rearrange the team to get Johnson on the field? He's a good striker from a mediocre Norwegian team who's never played at this level before. I'm perfectly satisfied just having him come off the bench in the 60th minute and make spot starts.
That's a good point. I was thinking more about completing this roster with a competent #9 rather than Johnson specifically.
I don't have any opposition to playing Kreilach as striker, it's just that he doesn't play as a true 9. I think it could really help if Johnson could be a true 9 who pushes the CBs and opens up space for Rusnak/Kreilach to operate in. I think basically everyone agrees that Rusnak isn't getting enough touches on the ball, and part of that is because we don't actually have a striker on the field. Of course, this is all assuming that Johnson is that striker. At this point, I have no idea if he is, but I have hope!
I think there is a very reasonable possibility that he's an Olmes or maybe Jaime. I think it's clear that he's already surpassed Ortuno.