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

I agree, it would be nice to have more play in the middle.

There are really only 3 ways to fix the poor past results going forward.

Change the players:

This is why I hammer on guys like Francis and Sarkodie.

Change the manager:

One day, but I guess that's not today.

Change the system:

Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. Same poor players, same lame coaching , same ineffective system.

I guess Kaval had a fourth, change the GM. I'm happy for that, but the team needs more changes than that.

 

That forcing to the outside is because there is no reliable outlet in the middle. Alashe and Godoy can never be counted on to be in a position to receive the ball in the center of the field. That means they have to go out wide early instead of near midfield. That means all opposing teams have to do is put pressure on the outside backs. Vancouver did the same thing to Lima and he caved under the pressure on that first goal.

So long as the central midfield is weak, the rest of the team will be weak. Sadly, Kinnear has never shown that he knows how to correct this, so it will go unfixed and the Quakes will continue to lose games. It's a blessing in disguise, though, since we all know Kinnear is past due on his expiration date.

 

How do we know that?

 

Changing the players won't matter in the long run, which is why a few of us around here come to the defense of the defenders. They get put under pressure probably more than any other team in the league outside of Chicago, and now Minnesota. They defend significantly more than good teams, and yet they still get criticized despite keeping goals suffered to a pretty low figure.

The system is the flaw moreso than individuals in that system. There is no inherent way for the ball to get forward from the defense on turnovers. What you want is a player around the center circle at all times so that they can be used as a quick outlet. Rarely is there a player in the middle of the field in that position. Instead, Alashe and Godoy play side by side right in front of the defense or right behind the forwards. You have no choice as a defender other than to hoof it up field when faced with that.

 

That's hard to square with the fact that "the system" flourished in 2012 when the Quakes won the Supporters Shield. And it worked in Houston when Dom had DeRo and Stuart Holden.

 

Queue up the "2012 was a fluke" posts. It's not a fluke when you score something like 73 goals and a GD in the high 20's or whatever it was. And no - to the "flukets" - the mother flukers(?) , it was not 73 "goonie goals".

We don't even know yet that the team is bad this year. With all due respect to Marvell Wynne, Lima is already better. Imagine if we had a similar improvement at left back. What would the team look like then?

Also Jesse is still carrying around one or two DP cards in his back pocket. Remember when we said we just needed to stay afloat somehow before the DP reinforcements come? How soon we forget.

 

I watched the game again last night and played back about 10 sequences where we broke down, or lost our shape and got exposed. Most of them were due to turnovers and slow transitions to get back in the play. I mean really slow... even from Godoy and Alashe. We were very lucky to not get burned for multiple goals.

I've been harping on hold up play as an option to break the press, and was shocked to see us lose such a high percentage of flat out 50-50 balls. It was comical, we could not back a defender off and chest or bring it down to feet. On the rare occasion we did have the ball under foot we gave it away so quickly and cheaply with a poor pass. It looked very nervy...we had more time than we realized. For the most part we lost a disproportionate amount of 1 v 1 battles up top and at flank mid.

I'd like to think the KC result was just an inordinate amount of poor individual play.

Imo, it was a game where the effort to win the battles just wasn't there, especially up field. You really can't expect to do anything if you can't win your battles and get on the ball. We'll see how they respond in NY. I'm hoping to see Hoesens up top to give a little more grit...and he still can stretch the D with speed.

I'm not as cynical as some of you. I think we're still learning to play together. I don't see us keeping the same players on the field if they continually come up short and we have other options available (Flo for a couple positions, Tommy at flank mid). I don't see us dropping a truckload of points without the coaching staff making adjustments. I also don't think we're in a tailspin after one poor road game. Also, we don't even have Cummings on the field yet...a lot of possibilities once he comes on.

 

I forgot to mention how bummed I was to see Godoy have to drop so deep after the Alashe sub...pretty much pinned him back. Which is the exact opposite thing we needed to see...bad move. He's more dangerous up field than any of our mids.

 

I don't think it's so much that people are worried the team is in a tailspin, rather that the early wins were not actually indicative of an improved team. History would lead one to expect that a decent start will not necessarily play out to be a good overall season. Their defense is already off to being worse than 2016, considerably.

The Quakes haven't been shut out yet, so that's good, but the lack of goals from forwards or wide midfielders is alarming, yet not surprising. Wondolowski and the defense can't score all of the team's goals, and if they do, the team will be as dismal and unwatchable as they were last year.

Given that the defense has been quite bad over three games, one would hope that Cummings would help improve them, but he also has to integrate with the team, meaning there could be a number of poor communications that have caused the Quakes woes so far. Two new players in the defensive lineup have so far done more harm than good. I'm not confident adding a third will make things better, at least short term.

 

I haven't studied the film, but I remember lots of poor passes.

 

Yep, that too, just a crappy game. Not completely unexpected on the road.

I wonder if home field in MLS is more of an advantage than other sports. Sure seems like it is.
I'd bet only a couple of teams per season, maybe 1 in each conference are even at 0.500 on the road...the majority are probably not even close.

 

That is priceless.

 

I looked up the meaning of "dork" just to make sure Sigi wasn't disparaging anyone's heritage.

 

I don't know, are you sure? Sounds Icelandic to me . No wait, nevermind, I'm thinking of Bjork.

 

I don't know, are you sure? Sounds Icelandic to me . No wait, nevermind, I'm thinking of Bjork.

 

According to a published line-up on reddit for the Quakes against their academy today, since the Sac game was cancelled, involved a trialist at LB. So FWIW they appear aware that Francis is our dork and are working on it. It's also pretty clear Colvey has been deemed not ready. I wonder if the game in Sac had been played, if we would now know who the trialist is. I would think it would need to be an American or green card holder. As far as we know, all the int slots are used.

 

Funny, that was my first thought when I saw the line up on the Quakes site. Trialist listed right after Tarbell in the back line.

 

If Francis was a "dork" vs KC, what was Salinas?

 

Yeah, pretty funny how sensitive he was to being called fat when he would talk so frankly of others. The clinic was about 20 years ago and he did acknowledge it wasn't a politically correct term, but when he used it his players would immediately envision someone less coordinated and more likely to panic under pressure.

His players were given the green light to take the player on off the dribble and try to embarrass him. He also said it was common for the opposition coach to switch the dork to the other side of the field thinking that UCLA's strategy was to overload the attack on that side, but of course that was incorrect because Sigi would just start exploiting the dork on the other flank. He said that was even better, because now players on both sides of the field were moving out of positions to protect their weak link and the defense was likely making mistakes left and right.

He said they would relentlessly target the dork until he was subbed out. By then the damage was done.

 

A substitute dork I suppose.