Post-match: D.C. United - San Jose Earthquakes (Saturday, 8/22) postgame thread [R]

So Colin is your pen name now?

 

terrible, results-oriented analysis.

Kinnear has been using a small-ball short-passing lineup for a couple of months now with TT, MPG, and quincy in, and Jahn/Sherrod out. We dropped points the first 4 or 5 times he did that because it was still a 4-5-1 with wondo in the midfield. But it was very much an mls 2.0 lineup. Moving Wondo up into a classic MLS 1.0 empty bucket 4-4-2 has been the magic trick.

I completely agree with the author Etinire that our lineup is razor thin. Doyle tends to build a decent 1-11 but a bunch of them are injury prone and he overlooks spots 12-20 so we are always screwed when the starter goes down. See Gorlitz last year. TT-MPG is about the only place we have legitimate depth.

 

That wasn't analysis, just opinion. I agree that some of his lineups have been rather progressive and implied a more technical game plan, however the performances on the field did little convince me he was going to turn this team into a dominant contender.

I give credit where it is due (go to page 2 of this thread to see that), but to be fair and honest, only 3 games this season had me thinking I was completely wrong about him. The rest of the games had me thinking of the 2014 Houston Dynamo and their -19 goal differential.

 

I think the team has reasonable depth.

d / holding mid: JBP, Pelosi, and then,finally :--), JJK
a-mid: TT
center back: Renato, Wynne
outside mid: Nyassi, TT, Barrera
forward: Jahn, Sherrod, OK, not great, Fucito playing in the role of Quincy
fullback: Cato, Pelosi, JJK, Nyassi in a pinch

Sure there is a drop-off in nearly every case, but that's going to happen for any team. My only complaint is that Dom doesn't seem to care so much about keeping guys in the rotation so that they're more fresh and ready to go. He'll just go all out for the win with no regard for keeping the larger squad in the mix.

 

I can't go through and refute everything point by point but our results over the last 3 years tend to disprove your argument. We have had injuries and then we have a serious drop-off to the second string. Meanwhile teams in smaller markets than us build way better depth. Hell just look at RSL who are below us they have better depth than us at a lot of spots. Look at forward they had sandoval backing up saborio and jaime. So when Saborio lost his sh** and started having big off field issues and locker room problems they could jettison him no problem and not have a big drop-off because they could throw Sandoval in there and not an adam jahn or mark sherrod.

 

Forward is one position where it is a bit of an issue with the Quakes because other than Wondo and Amarikwa, no one else has really been very effective. But OTOH Innocent is already out. So technically they are already down to "depth". To use your RSL analogy, Innocent (the Saborio analog if you will) is out, and they seem to be doing just fine with Wondo and Amarikwa :--). IOW you can't compare a "one down" scenario in RSL with a "two down" scenario in SJ. It's not a fair comparison.

 

46% was before this weekend's matches.

The updated estimate is 74.8%. (http://www.sportsclubstats.com/USA/Earthquakes.html)

 

Not to make too much of it, but I noticed that Cato threw a minor hissy fit on the Salinas goal play as he was open on Quincy's right side and Quincy might have been able to play him through. Instead he tried to beat a defender to the left, and after the defender poked the ball away, he was able to recover and pass to Salinas. In the meantime, Cato had turned back in frustration instead of manning the far post, which was pretty wide open at that point. He didn't really join the goal celebration either, just kind of gave it a golf clap and walked back.

 

I didn't like Kinnear's hiring and still don't, and still want him gone, along with Doyle. Is that better?

 

Boy, wouldn't it be great if we had something like a USL affiliate we could sign young guys and loan out to for development and create that needed depth and seasoning?

 

Wow! I knew that the number I posted was out of date because I could see that sportclubstats hadn't updated their Quakes page yet. Didn't know it would be that much.

A three game wining streak really vaults a team up the standing and "chance to make the playoffs" numbers. BUT, we're only just barely ahead of the stinking, evil flounders. So, fingers cross, pour libations to the soccer gods and so on, at least until we're seven or eight points clear of the redline. Maybe when we hit 1.6 PPG I'll feel more relaxed. How's that? I still think that 1.40 probably, and 1.44 almost certainly get us into the postseason.

It's great that we are in playoff position now, but there are plenty more games for us, and our enemies before the end of the season. <knocks on wood> Coming from so far behind, we need to maintain close to a 50% winning margin the rest of the way.

Oh, and I missed seeing the DCU game. DVR failure. I'm really annoyed. So I only got to see the highlights and look at the stats. While it might not have been a great game for us, beating one of the league's top teams in their house 2 to nil is clearly a quality achievement.

Little if any credit to John Doyle who still needs to be fired in the worst way.

Go Quakes!!

- Mark

 

I posted this several years ago, but at an STH event in response to a fan question, FY said something to the effect that players got thrown to him over the transom window.

 

Frank Yallop made a transom window reference? I'm impressed.

 

Yeah, I was back then too. He must be as old as he looks!

 

But the idea of someone in an office passing you stuff via the transom window is a very old concept. You like have to watch an early Spencer Tracy - Kate Hepburn movie to see that.

Everyone know who Spencer Tracy is?

 

Dick's brother.

 

I didn't think anyone would get that right.

 

Sweet-heart, I don't have an X-Box.

Come on.

We all know that deep down this team sucks.
This coaching staff is barely competent.
The playing staff is a joke. The depth is a tragedy.
The front office doesn't have a clue.
The ownership doesn't care about anything but dollar bills.

One and a half weeks doesn't change that.

Ready for this board to fall back to earth this Friday.

 

Everyone know who Dick Tracy is?

 

John Doyle's public comments already brought me back to earth.

 

It's pretty funny and ironic that the better we do this season, the worse off this franchise is going to be long term.

We suck at sucking.

 

We're a small team, after all.