Post-match: Sporting Kansas City - San Jose Earthquakes (Saturday, 3/18) postgame thread [R]

Sure seems quiet here today... I hope the new software isn't giving people trouble (looks pretty good to me so far).

 

It probably has more to do with everybody getting a reminder of what the rest of the season is going to be like: Kinnear putting out a toothless offense, hoping that the soccer gods give him the fortunate results that undeservedly delivered him some MLS Cups.

If the first question out of Fioranelli's mouth to Kinnear after that loss wasn't "how could you only take three shots in a game?" then I think the Quakes should clean house entirely and start over from scratch.

 

The team played like they were up 3-0 and only woke up in the last 5 min. There was no urgency. Everything was very tentative, with no conviction. To me that is more frustrating than the mistakes.

 

Nah, if that's the first thing out of Fioranelli's mouth, then he needs to take remedial math!

 

The "leave Shaun Francis open" tactic is our achilles heel. Every team we play against is starting do it. Francis needs to be ordered by the coaches not to pass it forward he's a turnover machine.

 

Actually, i thought i detected a hint of discontent in Dangerfield. He didn't seem to be making that many excuses. Maybe he's just as tired as we are of watching the Quakes spin their rear wheels in the mud.

 

I pointed that out during the game. Teams don't bother marking him at all.

 

Shocker!

 

Super weak to pin this on Francis. The team was crap from back to front. And Bingham cost us three points, at fault for both goals. No idea where his head was at today, but it wasn't on the pitch.

 

SKC were pretty much crap in their first two games, so of course they're going to look good against us. That's what the Quakes have excelled in for half a decade, getting other teams out of funks...

One successful, and only three attempted (with the two incomplete passes being *barely* forward)... truly "the Albanian Messi"!

This seems like Dangerfield levels of homerism... Dwyer is a whiny a$$ but that first one with Jungwirth looked to pretty clearly be a penalty. If the Quakes didn't get that PK we'd get fifty furious diatribes in the post-game thread...

Well the silver lining is that with most of the team playing so badly, Kinnear's usual lukewarm comments would actually be appropriate.

 

I would agree. I'm certainly no fan of Francis, but I thought he actually looked better (relative to most every other Quakes player) than usual in terms of connecting passes and helping us to keep possession in midfield areas. I could be wrong, but that was my general impression. My impression of Godoy and Dawkins and Alashe was that they were worse than usual.

 

I sure hope that Jesse is peed at Dom today.

Our guys looked ill-prepared and disorganized.

Simon got to play in front of Lima a bit, and still didn't look good. He's not combining well with his teammates, not moving to places where he can receive a pass, and generally not looking like a starting caliber player.

Most of the team suffered from the not moving into passing lanes to receive the ball. We again proved susceptible to high pressure tactics. Our communication was not good. And worst, the Sporks didn't look very good either. We could get torched against a good team.

Most of our guys played really poorly, from Bings forward. I'm sure that Dom will argue that if Bings hadn't mishandled that second goal (what a f@#$ up!) that we would have tied, and that's fine on the road. I fear that this game was a harbinger of things to come. No facet of our game looked good. We were vulnerable on a number of levels.

Maybe after a loss we get to see some new faces? TT should start in place of Dawkins, and Colvey or Imperiale in place of Francis. (Or, we could play with three in the back, but then we'd lose Lima going forward, so I think not.)

We're in trouble. Without new leadership, we will spiral into the drain. We're still too slow in transition. We still don't move off the ball well enough. We still rely on attacking up the wings too much.

We are easily defended.

It's going to be a long, ugly season until Dom gets fired.

go quakes!!
2-0-1 so far . . .

- Mark

 

Just saw Binghams play...I mean, I'm only 25. He realllly miss judged that first goal. Not so much him being wrong footed, but he over played his confidence in judging where that ball is going. Plus, the curve on it was pretty good, which aided in his misjudgment. I put it down to a confidence lapse. Goals like that happen every once in a while to pretty much every goalkeeper who has played beyond high school.

The second goal however.....I mean, I've made that mistake once as well, but I was 8. Then it happened again when I was 16, but it was a really rainy day in stoke.

 

I watched the condense game on MLS LIVE. Bingham was terrible on that own goal. Sheesh. The new forum interface is pretty nice on the other hand.

 

It's the America First interface.

 

Not sure what the best other moves would be, or exactly how best the positioning between the two might work, but am definitely interested in seeing what the midfield would look like with Jungwirth and Godoy in the middle. Just feels like our possession, and ability to play through/pass out of pressure from the teams that use three in the midfield would be better with what appears to be two of our best passers.

 

Unnoted here is the fact that over the three weeks gone from the 2017 season, our first two opponents are winless so far. Neither the Shitecaps nor L'impact have notched a win in 2017. Perhaps it was just a fortuitous artifact of the schedule that we had a full two weeks of thinking that a Dom-coached Earthquakes can be good...

 

To me the problem seems to be systemic. They are badly outplayed enough that it doesn't seem like switching one guy will really solve it. And that one guy is injured or not available and then what? The Quakes are going to see a lot of pressing 5-man midfields. Seems to me that they need better movement / short passing and / or get good at long ball to break it.

 

I watched a replay of the game last night, the only words I could think of while watching were Shambolic, lethargic and dispirited. Dawkins must sit in favor of young blood, the benching will give him time to get his head right if indeed he ever can get his mojo back. Francis is where our attacks go to die with the occasional exception of a cross which usually ends up at an opposing player, there's a reason other teams leave him unmarked.
Two steps forward, one step back will get you someplace, albeit slowly, if you have the patience. I have run out of patience.

 

After watching that game and the huge gaps between the midfield and our back four, I'm amazed that we are starting a NCAA college player ahead of the captain of El Salvador's national team. It makes no sense to me. We gave up a lot for Ceren, and don't play him. If we were solid and spraying the ball around nicely, that'd be one thing. But we're not.

 

I am also scratching my head regarding Dom's apparently disinclination to play Darwin and Anibal at the same time. Seems like a no-brainer to me. If you feel the absolute need to have Alashe out there, too it's simple: Put him at CB, move Jungwirth over to the left, and leave friggin Francis at home!

 

Meh, Alashe also has national team experience / starts, with the U23's. I think it is a little unfair at this point to call him an "NCAA college player". They are both in their 3rd year in MLS. And Fatai can use his left foot, or he will at least try.

 

you need guys who are super athletic and can cover ground as your cm's when you play with 2 strikers. alashe covers a lot more ground than ceren. I don't think ceren is that good of a passer. he seemed like a cronin to me. he made safe back passes but rarely advanced possession through the middle third on the ground like godoy or baca.