Yueill currently second in GOTW voting behind Nani: 🤩 STUNNERS 🤩Vote now for #ATTGotW 👇— Major League Soccer (@MLS) May 3, 2021 Yueill should win but both are great goals, clearly MLS needs GOTW inflation with 27 teams... they should award three every two weeks!
MLS has the Quakes 10th: #AustinFC jumps into Top-10 three weeks into their inaugural season. 👀Your thought on this week's rankings ⬇️: https://t.co/8iNUNRbWvD pic.twitter.com/WgZWVu25fQ— Major League Soccer (@MLS) May 4, 2021
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/power-rankings-nycfc-orlando-rise-skc-fall-after-week-3 10 San Jose Earthquakes +6 Things Cade Cowell, who has a goal and an assist in each of the last two games, was not born in time for: Y2K, Woodstock ‘99, any culturally relevant Nickelodeon animated shows, Tobey Maguire in the first Spider-Man, America showing its first signs of a growing cultural divide as it wrestled between choosing Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson as the first and only American Idol, and MLS Cup champions: The San Jose Earthquakes. Ok fine, he was born like a month before the Quakes won their last title. The point stands though. You’re old.
Remember we've barely any Judson this season. Like 30' over two games? And Remedi is looking good. I am still terrified of corner kicks, but otherwise I think the defense has some upside. Of course we'll have some 4-1 beatdowns coming to us, and if JT doesn't clean up his fast decisions on back passes there will be some wins turned into ties (Vega-over-the-foot style), but I think there is reason to hope.
Oh, the blowout losses on the road are coming, I'm pretty sure of that, possibly starting this week. The key is to win a few of those, and win most of the home games. As I've said before, I have no reason to believe this team won't be (way) up and (way) down like it has been the last 2 years. Hopefully just a little bit more up than down though relative to previous years. We've off to a much better start anyway.
I love how hope spring eternal with our fans. We’re going to get ripped. We’ll miss the playoffs, we’ll be in the bottom four of our conference, maybe bottom four of the league. Yes, we’re off to a good start, against undermanned and weak sides. When we play the big boys, we’ll get stomped. Go Quakesfans!! - Mark
In MLS, if you only beat the weak and undermanned teams... you'll make the playoffs. Yeah, unless we find some chemistry and get some surprisingly good defense from the new guys, we won't win the cup. But that can't be the only measuring stick. The two home games so far have been _very_ entertaining. Let's hope it keeps up. No need to get a jump on despair, it will jump on us when it is ready.
Every new season is a clean slate for every team due to roster turnovers and/or coaching changes that require time to gel. As a result, the bad teams of last season could very well turn out to be average or even playoff teams this season in a closed-system type of league like the MLS. I’m not saying the quakes will be the top 5 team like their current ranking suggests but I’m also not saying they’ll be wooden spoon contenders either. We may have played “undermanned and weak sides” thus far but Dallas, who we beat last week, handled the Timbers handily this past weekend so what does that make the Timbers? Let’s just let the sample size grow to about 10-15 games before we can get a much better picture about our team and prospects for the season.
Sometimes I think that optimists see the glass as half-full, pessimists see it as half-empty, and Mark sees it as a potential source of dysentery...
While I think wide fluctuations do happen year over year, on balance you're going to have about the same number of teams going upwards as the number that go downwards, especially this year with all of the intra-division play. The reason I think the Quakes season will go roughly like the past two - sometimes we're very good, sometimes we're very, very bad, is that we're pretty much the same team - same coach, almost all the same starters. Really we have one new starter in the lineup + Cade. Cade is a bit of a wildcard if he keeps up his form, but I think he's going to come down to earth a bit.
ESPN+ is a good option when they are carrying the game, like the DC one and the upcoming RSL game, because they keep the replay for the rest of the season.
That is some tricky math. Remedi + Chofis + Cade = 1 person + Cade = ~0. The place we felt we needed the most help is a place maybe Remedi helps. And last season we had no Hoesen, so adding Cade to a Hoesen-less team is a big change. We had no real CF threat at all on the counter. Cade doesn't have to be 1G/1A per game to force a big change in how teams have to defend us. And taking the last couple defenders and pushing them back for fear of Cade really does help the defense. It gives the attacking team less ability to cycle the ball, a longer run to get an extra man to overlap, and a bigger fear of attacking 3rd turnovers. It is true that Cade and TT scored some goals that will only convert 25% of the time or less... but guess what? We won by big enough margins we didn't even need those low-probability goals. The brain dead mistakes like the first minutes of the Dallas game do have to go, though.
Forgot about Remedi, but one of the reasons I "semi-excluded" Cade is that he was available to start last year, and did a few times (and didn't really impact the games positively all that much in general). Did he suddenly get way, way better? It's possible, but I still think he's going to return to the mean a bit. Remedi is a pretty much a like for like switch with Judson IMO, so to me he doesn't necessarily make us a better starting team. He does add needed depth, though, sure. As I've pointed out before, if anything we have gone backwards in terms of talent this year over last year. In terms of players who are actually going to play, it's: Lost Erickson, Vako, Hoesen, Kashia, Lima Gained Chofis, Remedi, Abecasis Now, my math says 3-5 = -2 There's a kind of "grass is greener" effect where we want to think that, oh, the players we got rid of weren't very good anyway, but the new guys, they're really good! That will especially be out in force after a few good games. But when the losses start to come in, Chofis and Remedi may not look quite so good (and in fact the hand-wringing about them after the houston game was in full force). It's the nature of fanhood to get "too high" and "too low". I'm very happy with how the team's played the last few games, but I'm not going to get "too high" about it. I still expect us to be very much an up and down team, as we've been the last few years, and to wind up right around the playoff demarcation line.
The biggest question is, what can we expect from Cade? I think all the information we have so far is that he certainly improved in the off season. Now if he keeps the current course he will be the league wide assist leader and contender for golden boot. That's not very likely for a 17 yo, but I won't be surprised at all if he ends the season with better numbers than Hoesen. I won't argue that Abecasis improves over Lima, but I'll just throw it out there and let anyone disagree, but, so far, I think we made a good move at right back. Another big question, is Chofis/Remedy an improvement over Vako/Magnus? My feeling is that they will work on this team better, but Chofis yellow cards is a concern so far. Looks like we might have Remedy and Judson on the pitch at the same time which just improves the quality we have on the field at once. I believe Jackson is playing better than ever. MA seemed to change his tactics slightly last year to be a bit more conservative and he seems to be sticking to that. So, we may not see those blow out loses this year. Maybe that can translate to more draws or even wins. Finally, will we actually get a replacement for Kashia? Maybe Beason is already pretty good? If we can get a defender who can help us defend set pieces that could be a big improvement. Of course, this piece is just a dream for now.
Sure I can definitely agree with a lot of that but what that analysis fails to account for is further development and acclimation by a lot of the players who are young/inexperienced and playing more minutes this year like Cade and Marie and also players that were added to the team at different points over the last couple of seasons like Fierro and Alanis who have now gotten a taste of the league and have a better understanding on what they need to do to bring about consistent performances. Fierro, for instance, has been a much better player in these first three games than he was in his first season for the Quakes. Also, Remedi has been a very good addition who provides a similar defensive output to Judson (2nd in MLS in tackles won last I checked) while being more skilled with the ball at his feet as well as better passing and link-up play. Based on Almeyda's comments and substitution paterns, it looks like he is trying to integrate Judson into the line-up at different positions on the field which could prove to be more quality infusion either into the starting line-up or a utility role off the bench. Abacasis has also looked solid thus far and looks to be very good depth. With Marie getting more time, that means that Lopez will need to step it up if he wants to get more minutes as well. There is definitely better depth and more competition on the team thus I would like to wait another 10 games or so to see how it all plays out before being able to confidently state where this current Quakes iterration is to be slotted.
I don't really buy incremental "returning guys getting better" as a major factor. Every team is going to have that same effect. I suppose you can be really a lucky outlier and every player just suddently gets significantly better, but generally guys may get slowly better, but they will be largely the same, and some will actually get worse (extended poor run of form, like with JT so far). I don't think we have better depth because we lost 5 at least starting quality players and gained 3. We have better depth at d-mid, the same depth at outside back, but worse depth at CB, worse depth at forward, and worse depth at left mid. As I said, fans tend to get either too high or too low. We are veering a bit into the "too high" category right now, but that's par for the course. And actually it's a bit of a welcome change because we spend most of our time complaining (too low).
Sorry, Jazzy J not every team's returning players are the same. If we get more than incremental improvement from Cowell, Yueill, Marie, Lopez, and other teams get just incremental improvement that is a net plus for the Quakes. I think the Remedi addition is huge, we had nothing when Judson wasn't on the field last year, this year we do. Is Chofis a net improvment. We'll see. Is Fierro better the longer he is in San Jose, the evidence seems to suggest he is. So while the Quakes changes in roster may not have been dramatic, it is possible for a team to get substantially better if they have a core group of guys who are maturing at the same time. Is that true. We won't know for a few game, we are three games into a 34 (?) game season. Give us seven or eight more games we should know a lot more.
Sure not every team will have the same level of “same player improvement” but it seems highly unlikely that one team is just going to go off the charts with it. Most teams return most of their starters. Most guys will improve the longer they play, with the exception of guys getting into the twilight of their careers. I just can’t quite get behind the “well our same guys suddenly improved a lot more than all of the other teams' same guys” argument. I think it’s a bit of wishful thinking - we are "drunken" by a very nice 2-game home set . Looking back through the years, generally when the Quakes suddenly got much better, it was because of significant roster turnover. 2001 - Agoos, Donovan, DeRo, ERob, Dayak, Ekelund, Lagos, need I say more? 2005 - too many to name, 2012 - Bernardez, Bush, Chavez, Lennie and Gordon (latter two both late 2011 adds I think). Even 2017 - a big improvement over 2016 - Flo, Urena, Hoesen, Hyka, Yueill, etc. 2019 over 2018 - a huge, impactful coaching change + Espinoza, Judson, Lopez, Vega, etc. This year we have a kind of "push", most likely - Chofis for Magnus, another "push", at best, Abecasis for Lima, and one added depth guy (Remedi). And we've lost two guys that have had double-digit scoring seasons for the Quakes (Hoesen and Vako), along with a veteran CB (Kashia). Once Judson starts to play he plays pretty much every game, so not sure how much the Remedi thing is going to help us overall, unless Matias finds a way for both to start. He's definitely a big improvement in our CM depth, no doubt about that. Fierro is gonna Fierro. I don't see all that much improvement. He's light, gets pushed off the ball, he can't really take on players with the ball at his feet, he's not nearly as fast as advertised. He had a nice goal-line clearance - OK, but that's really kind of a one-off. From what I've seen he's consistently kind of "meh". We've got 5 of 7 at home, but then some tough road game stretches. It's not always going to be rainbows and unicorns, playing FCD and a weakened DCU at home.
🧵 of xG step plots/race charts from MLS week three. I made a few viz enhancements with more to come. xG from draft #WGCF project model.Shot outcomes⭕️ = with xG: goal⭕️ = small w/o xG: save🔴 = miss ♦️ = post 🟥 = blockFirst up, #Quakes74 v #DCU. pic.twitter.com/hKnwXW23w0— JMoore Quakes (@JmooreQuakes) May 6, 2021 Simple xG probabilities gave only a sliver of a chance for the #Quakes74 to score four goals in this one.Win probability here is a simple version based on xG totals. Calculating and showing real win probability after the first goal (in the first min) is extremely complicated. https://t.co/R7vOQGX0cE— JMoore Quakes (@JmooreQuakes) May 6, 2021
There is a case to be made that this season will be better than last year. Last year the Quakes were getting blown out left and right. Things were real bad. It all changed on Sept. 27th when we beat LAFC away. A number of things happened in that game. JT started for the first time (and hasn't lost the spot yet). MA dropped the line back and played a bit more compact (and we mostly continue to do that). We got a glimpse of the potential of Cade Cowell whose effort helped us win that game (and he's helped us win our last 2). Jackson, Judson, Espinoza, Shea all played great. Shea has been our super sub ever since which he is very good at. Of course that game wasn't perfect. In fact, it might have been a bit lucky. However, since that game our record has been 8-1-5 and all of the loses were close except for a meaningless game in Seattle. It was a dramatic turn around for us and we can point to a number of changes that brought it about. Best practices that we continue with in 2021. I suspect this season will be like last season but without the string of massive blowouts. I think we will still fight for that last playoff spot but the season should be much smoother than last year.
Not sure exactly how to phrase this, but, I think our chance of success is pegged more to our improvement playing together as a team rather than individual players incrementally improving their skills, though obviously that is part of the equation as well. Like making the effort to track back defensively to stymie an attack, or make a run that opens up space for another player. It's going to be doing lots of little things that depend more on attitude than ability. I like to watch the Premier League a lot, but, could care less about the big spending Big Six, but, instead like to watch those teams that can take their game to them, like Leeds United, West Ham, or Aston Villa. They don't have the wealth of individual skills that are found on the big clubs, but, they play hard and they play for each other.
I pretty much agree with this analysis of Fierro. However, he is definitely more of a team player than the person he replaced, Vako. Maybe Almeyda places that higher than the individual talent aspect.