Pre-match: Toronto FC - San Jose Earthquakes (Sunday, 5/26) pregame thread

Beat TFC!

 

With Wondo scoring 4 goals yesterday, I'm assuming Almeyda will have a hard time picking his starters. I can't imagine Chris sitting this game so who will start along with him? Vako , Eriksson, Hoesen or Espinoza?

 

I think Hoesen is hurt, so Matias shouldn’t have much problem at all.

Hmmmm. No one listed as injured on the MLS site, but a poster here said that Hoesen had a muscle strain and that’s why Chris got the start against the LanternKickers. OK, so not certain.

I’m not finding any reference to Hoesen being injured. You could make a case to start Wondo, or to sub him on late, but either way, he should get some minutes.

Go Quakes!!

- Mark

 

I would think anyone who scores 4 goals in one game deserves a start in the next, so its really who else starts with him, I'd like to see Espinoza and Hoesen, though I think it will be Espinoza and Eriksson.

 

Vako and Wondo together didn’t do much early on. Although Magnus played well while they were in a slump.

 

Were not a two forward team. If I had to pick, I would still take hoesen over Wondo. He provides more to the team. I’m not opposed to the Wondo start to test our main forward

 

One interesting thing I notice about Wondo is how rarely he slips and falls down. He’s very sure footed and I’ve seen him get his marker to fall down at opportunistic times. He probably has learned what cleats work best for the conditions. He seems like someone who would obsess over that.

 

The Quakes have one win and one draw and zero losses in games with Saghafi in the center.

 

Here it is!!

So yeah, Danny was out for Saturday's game, so probably he misses the next one (vs TFC) just to be safe.

And we'd better sign another forward in the coming window. We've only got two. Minimum we need a backup.

So probably Wondo starts, and hopefully, he gets more goals!!

Go Quakes!!
Rip the Hosers!!

- Mark

 

I assume we will officially sign Cade Cowell to the main squad as he will finally be homegrown eligible for MLS in early June.

 

And most likely Cade will be nowhere near MLS ready. That's asking quite a lot of a 15 year old.

 

He has not been scoring much playing against academy kids. Not sure how that would translate to MLS success right now.

 

Toronto is in a semi death spiral right now, we win this one or draw at the least. 1-1 or 1-0

 

The same way New England was in a death spiral? You can't take any game in this league for granted. It's all over the place in terms of results.

 

FYI - small sample size, but the Revs are unbeaten since firing Friedel. As always - beware the team that has just had a coach fired mid-season!

 

Didn't Cincinnati just lose big-time though, after firing their coach? Maybe the post firing bump, is a thing, maybe it's not. I think more it's just that the separation between teams is not big enough where you can reliably predict the outcome of any particular game in MLS. Even in San Jose's incredibly awful season, I think they were also on the receiving end of horrible luck. Not to say they weren't an awful team with an awful coach, but I think if you played the 2018 season again with the same exact players and everything, the Quakes would perform better than they did in actual 2018.

 

Stahre created bad luck. Dumb decision after dumb decision. A few points here or there would not have made him smarter.

 

Totally agree. Toronto without Jozy and Pozuela are easily beatable. I bet we could do it with 9 men.

At least we could if the game was at Avaya. Since we have to travel to Toronto I say we lose.

 

Yeah, which isn't my point. You can't work backwards from the results to make a coach smarter. What I'm saying is that despite the awful coaching, if you replayed the 2018 season numerous times, I wouldn't be surprised if what actually happened was a bit of an outlier in terms of total points earned.

Think about how many leads the team coughed up at home, for instance. How likely is that to actually happen the way it did? I'd guess it's pretty unlikely, even with poor coaching decisions. The variation probably wouldn't be enough to turn the team from a very losing team into a very winning team, but there's a big difference in being last by a few points, and last by a lot of points.

Also, think back to the Quakes team that beat a tired Kansas City 5-0. That was not a good team, yet they earned an unlikely result. Yes, Kansas City had lots of players out for various reasons, and they had a congested schedule, but it was still an unlikely result. That stuff happens in MLS all the time. Despite seeming so at times, I don't think the talent gap is particularly wide.

Plus you have weird scheduling with conferences, etc. Whatever. Point is, no matter how Toronto did one week, don't necessarily expect them to do the same the next week.

 

Stahre wasn't coaching the game against Atlanta. That was the Quakes' "post-firing bump" except for "bad luck."